Studio Six Digital, makers of the AudioTools acoustic measurement software for Apple iOS, have created a free acoustic measurement app for JL Audio called, rather creatively, "JL Audio Tools". iOS is the operating system used by Apple's iTouch, iPhone and iPad devices and hence this free app will run on any of them. Obviously the iTouch and iPad will need some kind of microphone attached since they do not come with this as standard. The app can be downloaded directly from the iTunes store. More information on the app can also be found at the app page on the main Apple website. In this blog post I'm going to walk you through the main features of the app. Once you've downloaded the app and launched it the first screen you see is the menu screen. The JL Audio Tools app does not have all the features of the paid-for Studio Six Digital Audio Tools app but does have many of them. The JL Audio app offers a Sound Pressure Level (SPL) meter, a Real Time Analyzer (RTA), a speaker polarity test and some handy audio calculators.

The next features are the set of audio calculators. There is an ohm's law calculator, an amplifier power calculator, a dB conversion calculator and my personal favorite, the sine wave calculator.

The sine wave calculator is really useful, since you can quickly enter any of frequency, wavelength and time and it recalculates the other values. I often use a calculator like this when evaluating the acoustics of someone's room. The calculator is useful since it enables you to identify where nulls for particular room modes might be (at the quarter wavelength position).

The final feature is a speaker polarity test function. To get this to work you need to download a wave file from the Studio Six Digital website and burn it to a CD or other device to generate the test signal. In my opinion this is a great feature, since you can pay upwards of $100 for a standalone hardware polarity test set which doesn't fit in your pocket! Quite a few times I have found a speaker incorrectly wired in a home theater setup due an installers misunderstanding of how to wire adjacent bipole speakers. I even came across it once in a high end audio setup where the owner wondered why there was no central image!

JL Audio dealer for the F110, F112 and F113. We offer free in home installation and subwoofer calibration for both high end audio setups where the subs support a pair of speakers and for home theater environments. Our subwoofer calibration process must be one of the best in the business - we use high resolution acoustic measurements to perfectly set crossover points, phase and delays. The result is seamless integration from sub to speakers. We also offer the subwoofer calibration process separately. It normally takes about a half day to set up a pair of subs. If you are interested we'd love you to get in touch.