Set up
Measuring needs a computer with an audio interface; Bluetooth audio isn't supported. Have a look around: everything below is what you'll get on a computer. On a phone you can open your Collection, look up a model, or read a saved calibration.
Your turntable setup uses the Ortofon Test Record. No test record? Measuring records needs none, and neither does Check before you record.
No turntable handy? .
What this record can test
A recording works when live input doesn't. Playing it through reads it just as your turntable would, in real time: the same steps light up and the same meters move. Ticking “Read it all at once” reads the whole recording without playing it.
Your turntable, step by step
The order matters: gain first, because every other reading is measured against it; then tracking force, because nothing reads true until the stylus holds the groove; anti-skate next, because it balances that force; azimuth after both, because a skating stylus leans; speed last, because it depends on nothing else. Loading, optional, comes last: it compares your phono stage's settings.
Your calibration
More
Saving keeps everything read here: the steps above as you set them, and any recordings ticked. Saved to your account with the rig it was played on, Compare can set it beside any other.
Each step in full
From a recording
Record a side, or open a recording of one, and each test's result appears here and in the steps above.
Your recordings
Play the side twice and the calibration also knows how repeatable it is.
Finish with a clean pass
Optional. Once everything is set, record once more without touching anything: the whole side, or only the tracks you want. It's read like any recording and joins your calibration. Afterwards you can save it to this computer, or, with Saved recordings, keep it in your collection under your copy of the test record.
Read a whole side in one go
The side of GrooveBench Calibration and Testing (in development) is made in your browser, played through the GrooveRig as it is set now, and read by the same tool a real recording goes through: faster than playing it. Nothing is uploaded or kept.
Calibration
Before and after
Listen, level-matched
Plays the same track from each recording, with the louder one turned down to match. Blind hides which is which until you choose.
Check before you record
Thirty seconds, no test record needed. Lift the stylus, press Check, then lower it into the lead-in of a record when asked. It compares what it hears with your earlier checks on this rig and says if anything has changed.
What do you want to measure?
Play the Ortofon test record's sweeps (tracks 1–4) once for each loading setting you want to compare. In the bar above choose Recording, pick the recording, and press Read the sweeps.
Your own meters
Your audio interface's self-test
- Connect a cable from the interface's output (1 and 2) to its input (1 and 2).
- Turn any speakers or headphones on that output down.
- Press Measure. It listens to the silence for three seconds, then plays a 997 Hz tone for about four and reads what comes back.
An amp or line-level preamp
The page plays a tone and a sweep out of your interface. It goes through whatever you connect - a preamp, an equalizer, a cable run - and comes back in, and you get its gain, response, distortion and noise. Line-level gear only: never a phono input or a speaker output.
- Once: a plain cable from the interface's output (1 and 2) to its input (1 and 2), and Measure the cable alone. It's kept on this computer, and taken out of every result after.
- Then the gear in the loop instead: output → the gear's input, the gear's output → back in, and Measure through the gear.
Signal generator
Goes to the instruments only. Nothing is played aloud.