Using Accelerometers with SoundCheck

Additional Resources for SoundCheck

Detailed explanations of how to use SoundCheck can be found in the SoundCheck manual.

Video Transcript: Using Accelerometers with SoundCheck

In this short quick tip video I’ll demonstrate how to use an accelerometer with SoundCheck. This is useful when measuring vibration, not just an acoustic input.

First you need to set your input signal path to accelerometer in the calibration menu and calibrate your input. Accelerometer calibration sequences are built into SoundCheck so it’s simple – just click the calibrate button and it will automatically calibrate your input. I have a B&K 4294 calibrator with a 4534-B-001 accelerometer, which I can select here and then calibrate. 

Now let’s take a look at our accelerometer readings. I still have my accelerometer on the calibrator, so it should show me 10 meters per second squared. 

You can also integrate the input to view velocity rather than acceleration. We just need to check this ‘integrate’ box here, and now it calculates the velocity in meters per second. This is useful if you want to correlate measurements to velocity rather than acceleration, for example, if you are measuring fan noise at different speeds or as a device ramps up.This calibrator outputs 10 milimeters per second, so if I enable this checkbox that’s what we’ll see. 

You can even plot these measurements on a strip chart to see how the velocity is changing over time.