hispls 5,000+ posts
CarAudio.com Veteran
Review of:
SPL-Labs Wireless Bass Meter
I talked myself into buying one of these at the pre-sale price. I have owned Termlab and had more recently been using the makeitlouder.com meter which is more than adequate for testing and such so I didn't "need" a meter, but the Android app hooked me.
Ordering was easy and Shizzon kept me updated with status every step of the way. It was delivered priority mail and well packed right on schedule.
Product in hand, I'd like to mention that as others have reported the product itself and the carrying case do look a little cheezy. The decal isn't really put on well and it wants to come off. Of course I guess if you want the decal to look prettier you can pay 200-300$ more to own a termlab.... If you're OCD it may be worth the investment to save your sanity. The carrying case I got is soild and functional.
OK, on to accuracy. With my current box I did a 148.7 on the termlab a couple weeks ago, on the SPL-Labs meter I got 148.68. So if being consistant with termlab is important, my experience shows it's probably as close to termlab as other termlabs are to eachother (I noticed variance in my termlab to others when I owend one). Really the key isn't so much one meter being accurate to the next, it's the meter being accurate with itself. This and the makeitlouder meter are both capable of precision to .01db....when testing for gains of 10ths isn't enough, you can see your tweaks gain or lose you 100ths here.
The best part of this piece is size and ease of setup. I couldn't get it running under windows XP (seems the main support is for 7 and Vista), though I didn't put much time into trying and it could be possible with an older version of the software or something. I must say though if this meter required a laptop to run I'd have never bought it anyway. The thing I hated most about the termlab was the PITA factor of setting it up. Uncoiling long wires, the separate box and sensor, and needing to plug in a bunch of stuff and fire up the laptop. SPL-Labs wireless is basically just your phone or tablet and a sensor the size of the termlab sensor.
Android app was right on their site and up and running in about a minute. Getting this thing going is as simple as sticking the sensor to your windshield, pressing the power button, turning on your phone and clicking the app. It has bass race and SPL mode. Display is very nice, IMO far supperior to TL readout. It shows real time bar graph and when in peak hold will show all peaks, current SPL, and display the peak frequency at which the peak was hit.
My only beef is that the screen on the android device likes to time out and go blank so in long periods of testing you need to keep touching the screen every minute to keep it from going to sleep.... I suspect this will be remedied when they update their software (they claim to update often...time will tell). Still if they never did anything I'd still keep it.
Anyway, for the price of a termlab I'd take this over it every day of the week. Android functionality is really sweet and overal the software I find far supperior and the ease of setup makes it an all around fantastic package. Highly reccomend this for anyone in the market for an SPL meter.
SPL-Labs Wireless Bass Meter
I talked myself into buying one of these at the pre-sale price. I have owned Termlab and had more recently been using the makeitlouder.com meter which is more than adequate for testing and such so I didn't "need" a meter, but the Android app hooked me.
Ordering was easy and Shizzon kept me updated with status every step of the way. It was delivered priority mail and well packed right on schedule.
Product in hand, I'd like to mention that as others have reported the product itself and the carrying case do look a little cheezy. The decal isn't really put on well and it wants to come off. Of course I guess if you want the decal to look prettier you can pay 200-300$ more to own a termlab.... If you're OCD it may be worth the investment to save your sanity. The carrying case I got is soild and functional.
OK, on to accuracy. With my current box I did a 148.7 on the termlab a couple weeks ago, on the SPL-Labs meter I got 148.68. So if being consistant with termlab is important, my experience shows it's probably as close to termlab as other termlabs are to eachother (I noticed variance in my termlab to others when I owend one). Really the key isn't so much one meter being accurate to the next, it's the meter being accurate with itself. This and the makeitlouder meter are both capable of precision to .01db....when testing for gains of 10ths isn't enough, you can see your tweaks gain or lose you 100ths here.
The best part of this piece is size and ease of setup. I couldn't get it running under windows XP (seems the main support is for 7 and Vista), though I didn't put much time into trying and it could be possible with an older version of the software or something. I must say though if this meter required a laptop to run I'd have never bought it anyway. The thing I hated most about the termlab was the PITA factor of setting it up. Uncoiling long wires, the separate box and sensor, and needing to plug in a bunch of stuff and fire up the laptop. SPL-Labs wireless is basically just your phone or tablet and a sensor the size of the termlab sensor.
Android app was right on their site and up and running in about a minute. Getting this thing going is as simple as sticking the sensor to your windshield, pressing the power button, turning on your phone and clicking the app. It has bass race and SPL mode. Display is very nice, IMO far supperior to TL readout. It shows real time bar graph and when in peak hold will show all peaks, current SPL, and display the peak frequency at which the peak was hit.
My only beef is that the screen on the android device likes to time out and go blank so in long periods of testing you need to keep touching the screen every minute to keep it from going to sleep.... I suspect this will be remedied when they update their software (they claim to update often...time will tell). Still if they never did anything I'd still keep it.
Anyway, for the price of a termlab I'd take this over it every day of the week. Android functionality is really sweet and overal the software I find far supperior and the ease of setup makes it an all around fantastic package. Highly reccomend this for anyone in the market for an SPL meter.
