100 Things #5: Test Devices Using Speech or Music

SoundCheck can test devices using any .wav file as a stimulus. This enables real signals such as speech or music to be used in any audio test. Speech signals are used for telephony and voice activation and in testing to IEEE and ITU standards that use P50 speech and ITU Real speech recordings. These ‘real world’ test signals are also valuable for measuring devices that include nonlinear signal processing such as cell phones and hearing aids, as these often do not test accurately with sine waves.

Test Devices Using Speech or Music

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Read on about all of SoundCheck‘s stimulus options and more, with features perfect for R&D and Production.

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SoundCheck can test devices using any .wav file as a stimulus. This functionality, available since 2004, enables real signals such as speech or music to be used in any audio test. Speech signals are used for telephony and voice activation and in testing to IEEE and ITU standards that use P50 speech and ITU Real speech recordings. These ‘real world’ test signals are also valuable for measuring devices that include nonlinear signal processing such as cell phones and hearing aids, as these often do not test accurately with sine waves.

Testing devices using music as a stimulus enables measurements, such as non-coherent distortion, to be made with test signals that simulate the product-use, returning results that correlate well to listener experience.

The use of wav files also means that in the rare case you want to use a custom signal that cannot be created using SoundCheck’s stimulus editor, it can be made in another program and imported as a WAV file for use in SoundCheck.

All Wav files can, of course, be calibrated and equalized in SoundCheck, ensuring reproducibility and compliance to standards.

More recently, in 2019, we added the capability for SoundCheck to open multichannel WAV files into the memory list, signal generator and stimulus steps. This enhances the testing of smart devices and microphone arrays, conveniently auto-naming and grouping the channels together.

So there you have it, wav files introduce the ultimate in flexibility to your test stimuli.