XTZ Room Analyzer II Standard & Pro Acoustic Measurement System Preview

Update: Official review of XTZ Sound Room Analyzer II Pro now live!

Acoustic Frontiers has released an Acoustical Measurement system called XTZ Room Analyzer II that is said to be easy to use and it comes in two flavors, Standard and Pro. XTZ contains both the hardware (microphone, soundcard, cabling) and the software required to calibrate your home theater.  This system interfaces with your A/V receiver and external equalization to help you dial in the best response for a better home theater experience.  The graphic interface looks pretty cool and the price for these two systems seems quite reasonable.

XTZ Room Analyzer II comes in two flavors:

• XTZ Room Analyzer II Standard, retailing for $229.99
• XTZ Room Analyzer II Pro, retailing for $359.99

There are four pieces of functionality that XTZ Room Analyzer provides that is used to complete a system calibration by analyzing your room response:

• Sound Pressure Level (SPL) meter with C weighting and slow averaging to set speaker and subwoofer levels
• Delay alignment tool to set speaker and subwoofer distances
• Real time analyzer (RTA) to set subwoofer phase / polarity
• Frequency response ‘Room Analyzer’ with 1/3^rd octave smoothing to check subwoofer phase / polarity

     

XTZ Room Analyzer II Standard             XTZ Room Analyzer II Pro

 

Features:

• Both versions are all in one box packages that include the hardware (soundcard, microphone, cabling) and software required to take acoustic measurements
• Standard version has upgraded hardware compared to the original version yet retails at $70 less
• Pro version has completely new hardware with increased microphone accuracy
• Separate software for Standard and Pro versions; Pro version has more functionality
• New software for both versions includes SPL meter; Pro version also includes signal generator
• Runs on Windows

Uses of the product:

The Standard version is best suited for:

• Home theater calibration -  set levels with the sound pressure level (SPL) meter and dial in distance settings with the unique 'delay alignment' tool.
• Subwoofer integration – using the high resolution 16Hz-300Hz frequency response and real time analyzer (RTA) modes.

Acoustic Frontiers has published two in depth tutorial blog articles that explain how to use the XTZ Room Analyzer:

for Home Theater Calibration (see: bit.ly/twMsCv)

and Subwoofer Integration (see: http://bit.ly/s9GofY)

The Pro version does the above plus:

• Room acoustic analysis - the software has capability to do high resolution 16-300Hz frequency response and low frequency decay spectrogram measurements as well as full range 20Hz-20kHz frequency response and 2D/3D waterfalls to analyze reflections and check for flutter echo.
• Room correction - the software automatically generates correction filters for room modes which you can then further optimize using the unique parametric EQ software emulation mode.
  
  

Intrigued by this new system, we asked Acoustic Frontiers a few questions about this new XTZ system to better understand how it works.

Q: How does the XTZ system perform room correction?

A: It analyzes the measurement to find peaks that would benefit from application of parametric EQ.

Q: Does the XTZ  system  have a built in EQ or is an external EQ system required?

 A: XTZ has NO  built in EQ - the software generates parametric EQ correction filters to be applied in an external EQ device. All of the filters that are automatically generated can be modified, and the user can add their own. The Pro version also includes a 'parametric EQ' emulation mode, which basically plays the measurement signal through a software emulation of the selected parametric EQ filters. This makes fine tuning EQ much quicker than if the EQ values had to be transferred into an outboard EQ device.

Q: How many bands of adjustment are possible? 

A: Up to 7 bands.

Q: How does this system interface with an A/V receiver? 

A: Via an included RCA cable into the analog inputs of your AVR.

About XTZ

XTZ is an audio company from Sweden who manufacturer a range of speakers and electronics.

Gamla Nissastigen 19, Torup, Sweden, 314 41

+46 345 20049

www.xtz.se

info@xtz.se

About Acoustic Frontiers

Acoustic Frontiers from Kentfield, CA, is an acoustic consulting company and retailer of acoustic treatment, room correction and acoustic measurement products.

1 Hillside Ave, Kentfield, CA 94904

+ 1 415 254 4204

nyal@acousticfrontiers.com

www.acousticfrontiers.com

Unless otherwise indicated, this is a preview article for the featured product. A formal review may or may not follow in the future.