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Testing Audio Performance of Hearables

Smart headphones or “hearables” are designed not only to playback music but to enhance communications in the
presence of background noise and in some cases, even compensate for hearing loss. They may also provide voice
recognition, medical monitoring, fitness tracking, real-time translation and even augmented reality (AR). They
contain complex signal processing and their characteristics change according to their smartphone application and
‘real world’ conditions of their actual environment, including background noises and playback levels. This paper
focuses on how to measure their audio performance under the many various real-world conditions they are used
in.

Authors: Steve Temme, Listen, Inc.
Presented at AES Headphone Conference 2019, San Francisco, CA.

Full Paper
Poster Presentation

Triggered Record Using WAV File (Version 16.1 and later)

This sequence allows you to test devices without an analog input such as smart speakers, tablets, cellphones and MP3 players using SoundCheck’s frequency-based trigger functionality. This method offers improved accuracy over previous level-based triggering, especially in noisy environments. A stimulus WAV file is created in SoundCheck, and copied to the device under test, where it is played and the response recorded in SoundCheck as if the stimulus were played directly from SoundCheck. The stimulus WAV file to be used on the device under test (DUT) may be customized in the stimulus step.

Note that this sequence uses the level-based trigger available in SoundCheck 16.1 and later. If you are using version 16.0 or earlier, please see the level-based trigger sequence.

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