Room EQ Wizard — The Complete Guide: Acoustic Room Measurement, Reverberation Time and Background Noise
Room EQ Wizard (REW) turns a laptop and a measurement microphone into an acoustic measurement system. The software plays a frequency sweep, records the response and derives the acoustic characteristics of the space from it. It is free for any use and runs on Windows, macOS and Linux.
Room EQ Wizard (REW)
REW / John Mulcahy
Acoustic measurement of a space — frequency response, reverberation time and background noise.
Get it from the vendorWhat you get
- Frequency response — of the room and of the loudspeaker system.
- Reverberation time — RT60, T20 and T30 by frequency band.
- Clarity and speech intelligibility — metrics for classrooms and meeting rooms.
- Background noise — a spectrum against NC and NR curves.
- Modal calculators — resonances in a rectangular room and the effect of absorbers.
What you need to start
Reliable measurement requires a calibrated measurement microphone — separate hardware that is not part of the software. Beyond auditoria, REW is useful to engineers: checking background noise in an office or classroom, diagnosing resonance in a plant room, and measuring the effect of acoustic treatment before and after. The software is not open source.
Related tools
For processing and plotting the results — Python or LabPlot. For thermal comfort in the same space — CBE Thermal Comfort Tool.
Python
Python Software Foundation
The language behind most modern engineering computation, and its full ecosystem.
Get it from the vendor
LabPlot
KDE
Data analysis and scientific plotting in a graphical interface — a free alternative to Origin, with curve fitting and FFT.
Get it from the vendor
CBE Thermal Comfort Tool
Center for the Built Environment, UC Berkeley
Thermal comfort calculation to ASHRAE 55 and EN 16798, in the browser.
Get it from the vendorThe bottom line
REW is a free acoustics lab on your laptop — all you need to add is a calibrated microphone.