insider9 said:
Thanks Davedotco! I've not considered this. Taking the speakers outside isn't possible. I wouldn't risk damaging them.
My room is acoustically treated though and early reflections in particular have been reduced to not being a factor. That's at listening position. I could make sure the reflections are kept to minimum. Especially at 1m distance it would be rather easy. It would however reduce an already low reverberation. I take it this could have a bigger impact and showing up as speakers being even less sensitive.
The problem is reflection and reverberation, irrespective of room treatment, a lot of the energy collected by the mic will be reflected, the mic will not discriminate the way the ear does, so later reflections that the ear does a good job of rejecting, are still measured.
Bass bandwidth is an issue too, bass radiation paterns are near spherical, so think of all that bass energy reaching the mic, little of it will be 'direct' but it will still be measured and generally speaking, increase measured sensitivity. In room measurements will, because of the reflections, be much higher than measurements taken in free space, this is what is known as room gain and it can mess your measurements up a lot.
Remember, even in a treated room, once you get beyond a metre or so all measurements will be of the room response, not the speaker and in addition the speakers off axis response will make a big difference too.
All is not lost though, if you can set up different speakers in exactly the same way, in the same room, you should be able to get some very interesting comparisons but you will not get close to measuring 'real' sensitivity, for that you will need an anechoic chamber or a large open space in the Calefornian sun,