Yesterday I participated in my first Smaarting of a speaker system. The speaker system: the Albert of The Goodman Theatre. The Smaart was prompted by the upcoming musical Ain’t Misbehavin’ which will be the first musical I have ever worked on. It will also mark the final show of my internship at The Goodman, weighing in at a total of 6 shows.

Smaart is the name of a program. From the EAW website:

Smaart is the most straightforward and widely used software for real-time sound system measurement, optimization and control, and now, it’s also backed by the full weight of EAW’s renowned development and support services. Smaart is the most straightforward and widely used software for real-time sound system measurement, optimization and control, and now, it’s also backed by the full weight of EAW’s renowned development and support services.

What’s the point? Acoustics is a depressing subject. Problems arise when listening to one speaker in a room and many many problems arise when listening to 34 speakers in a room. As Doug Fowler puts it in his “SIA Smaart Live for Beginners“:

The goal: get out exactly what you put it.

This seems somewhat intuitive but upon examination a clear distinction can be made between the usual equalization process practiced by those not using test equipment and a scientific method supported by measurement and reasoning. The perfect integration of art and science can yield stunning results, yet it is crucial to understand when to apply each.

Art and Science in the same sentence makes me happy. I wonder what the perfect integration is…?

Smaart has always seemed too inaccessible to me, like something you have to pay mysterious professionals with alien technology every 10 years and in the mean time there is nothing you can do to precisely measure delay. After seeing the process in motion it seems that with a little research it’s something anyone could learn how to do. Base equipment and test microphones aren’t as expensive and out of reach as I thought.

Earthworks HDM microphone used as measurement (thanks to Dave and his iPhone for the picture)