Home Hi-Fi How do we measure speakers? Behind the scenes….

How do we measure speakers? Behind the scenes….

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How do we measure speakers? Behind the scenes….

At Alpha Audio, we like to combine science with subjective listening tests. Both say a lot about a product. But measuring alone makes no sense – it says little about the musical reproduction – and listening alone does not tell the whole story. After all, you cannot ‘show’ how directional a speaker is, or what the distortion is at a certain point. To show you how we measure, we’ve turned on our new live-stream set-up. We just let everything go… No secrets!

You may have wondered how we measure speakers. To answer that question we put the process on video. This is now easy with the new Live Stream Setup in the listening room. Except for some microphone issues – wireless with non- wireless gives a short delay in the wireless systems, apologies – the whole thing works fine.

Below you will find the results of a measurement on the Acelec Model One that we had for testing. We measured the following things:

  • Response: straight and off axis – 1 meter – time window = 3ms
  • Impulse response straight and off axis – 1 meter
  • Distortion simultaneous straight and off axis – 6 harmonics – time windows 18ms
  • Response, impulse and distortion at listening position
  • Waterfall straight 1 meter and off axis

We measure with the following system:

  • Illusonic IAP8 (especially the software, the processor itself is only a conduit)
  • Audience ID14 microphone interface with usb (very quiet interface)
  • MB measuring microphone (calibrated)

Measurement results

To see the process, you can watch the following video. Sorry for the reverb sometimes. We’re working on that.

Video – How do we measure speakers?