This sequence measures an audio amplifier’s Frequency Response, Gain, THD, THD+Noise, and Self-noise. It accomplishes this by playing a 1/3rd octave sine sweep through the amplifier. A HarmonicTrak™ analysis step calculates the fundamental frequency response curve as well as the distortion plots. The sequence then records and analyzes a spectrum of the amplifier’s self-noise.
In this paper, a mathematical definition of Total Harmonic Distortion + Noise suitable for testing high-resolution digital audio systems is presented. This formal definition of the “distortion analyzer” mentioned in AES17 defines THD+N as the RMS error of fitting a sinusoid to a noisy and distorted sequence of measurements. We present the key theoretical result that under realistic conditions a modern THD+N analyzer is well-described by a Normal probability distribution with a simple relationship between relative error and analysis dwell time. These findings are illustrated by comparing the output of a commercial distortion analyzer to our proposed method using Monte Carlo simulations of noisy signal channels. We will demonstrate that the bias of a well-designed distortion analyzer is negligible.
Authors: Alfred B. Roney The Mathworks, Inc. (formerly Listen, Inc.) Steve Temme, Listen, Inc.
Presented at AES 2018, New York, NY.
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