Electroacoustics

New electroacoustic devices such as mobile phones, tablets, and speakers, keep pushing the boundaries of design. The latest smartphone must squeeze in ever-more impressive capabilities to compete in a crowded market, and fulfill international telephone standards for voice capture and reproduction. And whether customers want open-backed headphones or flat frequency response speakers, manufacturers need to deliver the quality of sound that buyers expect, as promised by the brand.

Engineering quality sound reproduction

To deliver quality sound, it is essential to analyze the sound produced and captured during R&D. A multitude of parameters are critical to authentic sound reproduction. These include distortion, frequency response, and directivity. Since finding the right balance can require many tests, automation, data correlation, and ease of use help ensure productive electroacoustic testing.

Simulating real-life phone use

Behind the scenes of a simple telephone call, a multitude of processes are at work to make it effortless. To eliminate background noise while isolating the caller’s voice – even while the phone is on a table – smartphones use multiple microphones and sophisticated algorithms. Testing capabilities like these require precision measurement equipment. And most test parameters demand versatile analysis systems with sophisticated data management.

Telephone standards testing

Modern communication devices, smartphones and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) terminals must meet many national and international regulations, plus those set by network operators. This enables equipment to communicate efficiently with similar devices around the world. The regulations define their minimum performance quality abilities, such as the speed at which they switch between speaking and receiving, and their speech intelligibility. The methods used to test these parameters are laid out in great detail in a multitude of standards, which our software incorporates and guides users through to ensure that nothing is overlooked. These standards include ITU-T, ETSI, 3GPP, etc.