Hi Ben-
I'm not a loudspeaker measurement guru other than to measure the various subsystems in situ and attempt to align them together, but my experience in learning how to make valid measurements then led to learning how to interpret those measurements. These processes are sequential and interdependent.
I took my first Smaart class in 2004, came home and proceeded to make hundreds of invalid measurements. I discovered they were invalid when the applied correction didn't actually correct anything and sometimes made things worse. Once I could consistently make valid measurements it took another several months of working, and now years of experimenting, that I feel I have a solid grip on interpreting my measurements.
What Ivan was suggesting is that possession and use of appropriate software provides no certainty of a valid or useful outcome especially for someone just beginning.
Agreed.
We learn from doing things WRONG. And trying to figure out what went wrong and learning from the mistakes.
Now if you don't question what you are measuring and start to wonder "Why is that happening" then you won't learn.
But sharing and learning from others mistakes is also a good way.
The hardest thing to get across to people getting started in measurements is "Just because a wiggly line is on the screen DOES NOT mean it is VALID.".
It may be "correct" for the position and parameters involved-but that DOES NOT make it valid or useful.
Learning to "read between the lines" can be very useful.
And if something does not look right (based on other information available) it probably isn't.
It can be a long road and is not something you understand quickly.
But it DOES give you a better understanding of what you can and often MORE IMPORTANTLY-CANNOT do anything about.
Sometimes (lots of times) it is far better NOT to try to eq that dip in the response.
Yes it may "appear" on the screen, and you may "appear" to fix it, but try changing the resolution and you may realize all you did was make a non fixable problem worse in freq that are higher and lower in freq. So trying to fix a non audible problem has now resulted in a large hump in the freq response-NOT the flat response as first shown on the screen.
Reflections are a typical example.
And if you DID manage to fix it-AT ONE LOCATION-everywhere else it is worse.
Is THAT really what you were after? NO.
Sorry to rant.