Test and Measurement News

Enhanced acoustic measurement capabilities for dScope Series III

Cambridge, UK: Following the release of V1.2 software for the dScope Series III audio analyzer, Prism Sound has been developing and enhancing the acoustics measurement capabilities of the dScope Series III platform. These new developments will be on show at NAB in Las Vegas on the Prism Sound booth N5935.

In addition to providing a comprehensive suite of analogue and digital electronic analysis tools, this highly sophisticated audio test unit is now able to make measurements of acoustic transducers, and supports the following functionality:

• Impulse response analysis
• Quasi-anechoic frequency response, in units of dBSPL
• Loudspeaker rub and buzz detection^*
• Loudspeaker loose particle detection^*
• Impedance (vs. frequency) analysis^*
• Time domain averaging to attenuate the effects of background noise
• Complete automation support including limit checking and pass / fail results, for QC / verification testing

Audio engineers can now characterize every part of their electro-acoustic systems, from A/D inputs through board-level serial interfaces to power amplifier and loudspeaker outputs, using a single audio analyzer solution in a compact package. The dScope system takes full advantage of the processing power of the host PC, enabling multiple simultaneous measurements to be made and highly flexible customizable generation and analysis tools to be supported, whilst keeping hardware costs to a minimum.

The dScope Series III analyzer platform offers one of the most flexible and powerful automation/expansion environments of any audio test unit on the market today. Users can define their own analysis filters or calculation algorithms, enabling dScope Series III to go far beyond the hugely flexible tool that is already provided as standard. dScope Series III can be easily automated using VBScript commands, enabling the creation of custom test routines and pass/fail limit checking. This can be accomplished using the unit's in-built scripting environment, or alternatively dScope Series III can be controlled from within a third party automation executive. This makes dScope Series III ideally suited to production line testing applications, where testing of many different types of functionality in different domains (analogue, digital, electronic, acoustic) can all be accomplished using this single unit.

^*These features are scripted and are not part of the main dScope installation.