Are the Stereophile setup CD’s any good?


I saw a few on EBAY and I know they made at least 3-4 different ones. Is one better than another for speaker placement?  

Thanks in advance.

JD
128x128curiousjim

Showing 1 response by auxinput

Some of the stereophile discs have frequency waveforms (such as a constant 40hz sine wave).  Some have pink noise.  Mostly it's music you can use to test with, but there is better music available on sites such as HDTracks.  All you need for speaker placement are some good resolution music that you are familiar with.

Probably the most useful kind of thing I have gotten are frequency sweep files for stuff from 10hz to 150hz.  I used the following page to generate my own .wav files for individual frequency sweeps:

https://www.audiocheck.net/audiofrequencysignalgenerator_sweep.php

I did individual 10 second files that covered a 10hz range (such as 10-20hz, 20-30hz, etc.)

01_sweep_10Hz_20Hz_-3dBFS_10s.wav
02_sweep_20Hz_30Hz_-3dBFS_10s.wav
etc.

This allows me to hear exactly what my speakers and room are doing throughout the entire bass region.  I can hear where there are bass NULLs and also when my speakers cannot reproduce bass under a certain frequency.  It has helped tremendously in designing tuned membrane bass panels (such as the GIK Scopus traps).