This is only a preview of the June 2024 issue of Practical Electronics. You can view 0 of the 72 pages in the full issue. Articles in this series:
Articles in this series:
Articles in this series:
Articles in this series:
Articles in this series:
Articles in this series:
|
SETTING UP AND USING
ROOM EQ WIZARD
This accompanying article for the Speaker Test Jig explains how to set up
and use the freely-available Room EQ Wizard (REW) or Speaker Workshop
software to help you design and tweak loudspeakers.
F
irst off, you don’t need the
Loudspeaker Test Jig described in
this issue to use Room EQ Wizard
or Speaker Workshop to design and
test loudspeakers and drivers, but it
makes it a lot easier.
This article will describe setting up
and using REW (and later, Speaker
Workshop) assuming you have built
the Loudspeaker Test Jig. If you haven’t, you can still follow these procedures; you just need to rig up a microphone preamp, power amplifier, test
resistor and some other bits and pieces
to perform similar functions.
Essentially, what you need (and
the Jig provides) for measuring driver
impedance is to have your computer’s
sound card feeding a power amplifier
that drives the device under test (DUT)
via a well-characterised 10W or similar
power resistor. Both ends of that resistor then connect to the two
sound card inputs.
For driver and speaker
frequency response plots,
you instead need a calibrated microphone and
microphone preamp combination that gives a flat
response feeding into one
of your sound card’s inputs
while the output(s) drive
the DUT via a small power
amplifier. The Jig also does
that if you have a calibrated microphone (we’ll
describe an inexpensive
one in an upcoming issue).
By Phil Prosser
Final testing and setting up REW
We assume you have your computer
set up and your sound card properly
installed. Importantly, make sure you
have the sample rate set and no effects
turned on. Also check that you do not
have ‘monitor recordings’ set.
The critical steps to getting the Loudspeaker Test Jig operational with the
REW software are provided here. There
are many resources on the internet for
this program, and its full details are
well beyond the scope of this article.
Still, let’s get it up and running.
After installing and launching
REW, to set it up, open the preferences pulldown and then the preferences tab – see Screen 1. Select your
input and output here; usually, you
would use the default sound input
and output devices.
Calibrating your sound card
1. Set the Loudspeaker Test Jig to ‘component test’ and make sure there is
nothing connected to the Speaker
and DUT connectors.
2. Make sure the Loudspeaker Test Jig
attenuator is switched out.
3. In REW, open the preferences pulldown and open the preferences tab.
4.
Click on ‘Calibrate soundcard’.
Note that by using the ‘Component’ test mode, the 10W reference resistor acts as the loopback
mentioned in the text box that
will pop up.
5.
Click Next, and a text box will
appear providing instructions. Follow them.
Screen 1: the REW
Preferences dialog. Check
that the input and output
devices and sampling rate
settings are set correctly.
40
Practical Electronics | June | 2024
6. Click Next and check that you have
levels that are about right. You
should find that with about 200mV
RMS output, you see a measured
signal in the region of -10dB on the
loopback test. Sound cards vary in
sensitivity, so your voltages may
vary somewhat from ours.
7. Then click Next until the measurement sweep is made. You will get
a graph similar to that in Screen 2.
8.
On the tab for the measurement
you just made, add any notes you
need. Then click the disk symbol
on the measurement and save this
file somewhere sensible.
9. Now press Alt+Tab to switch back
to the preferences screen and click
on ‘Make Cal File’, which is below
the ‘Calibrate Sound Card’ button.
10.
Navigate to where you saved the
previous measurement. Select ‘all
files’ from the pulldown ‘files of
type’ and then select your calibration measurement. Click ‘Save’.
11. Your sound card is now calibrated.
Calibrating the Test Jig
1. Set your Loudspeaker Test Jig to
‘component’ test and ensure there
is nothing connected to the Speaker
and DUT connectors and that the
Attenuator is out.
2.
You only need to do this on the
first measurement you make. Click
‘Measure’ in the top left corner of
the main REW screen (Screen 3).
If you have not calibrated the SPL,
you will get a message box; you can
ignore it for now.
3. Now enter your sense resistor value
in the Rsense box at the right of
this window.
4.
Click on ‘Open Circuit Cal’ and
follow the instructions. Save the
file along with your others. Do the
same for ‘Short Circuit Cal’ and use
a known resistor value for ‘Reference Cal’.
5. You can now measure an impedance. A window similar to that
shown in Screen 4 will pop up.
Screen 5 shows the measured
impedance of a subwoofer.
Using it
To measure an impedance
1. Set your Loudspeaker Test Jig to
‘component’ test and make sure
there is nothing connected to the
Speaker and DUT connectors and
that the Attenuator is out.
2. Click ‘Measure’ in the top left corner of the main REW screen.
3. Click ‘Impedance’ in the top left of
the screen, as shown in Screen 3.
4.
Click Start once you have connected your unknown impedance
across the DUT terminals.
Practical Electronics | June | 2024
Screen 2: this shows the frequency response REW has calculated for the
measurement system, including the computer sound card.
Screen 3: you make impedance and frequency response measurements using
this screen in the REW software.
Screen 4: calibration with our 10W test resistor is complete, and the result
almost exactly matches what our Low Ohms Meter reads.
To measure speaker frequency response
1. If you are testing a tweeter, put a
high-value non-polarised capacitor in series to protect it from low
frequencies, and consider running
the sweep from, say, 500Hz up.
2. Set your Loudspeaker Test Jig to
‘speaker’ test.
41
3.
Connect your speaker across the
Speaker terminals.
4. Plug your microphone in and set
the microphone gain as required.
5. Set the attenuator on or off depend-
ing on the level you intend to test at.
6. Click Measurement again, and this
time select ‘SPL’.
Screen 5: a measurement of the impedance of a subwoofer taken using REW
and our Test Jig. It gives a nice smooth plot that shows resonance peaks at about
31Hz and 72Hz (driver/box) plus 850Hz and 2.5kHz (cone breakup).
Screen 6: a frequency response plot of a wide-range driver made using REW.
This sort of information is invaluable in speaker design and tweaking.
7. The system will run a sweep and
you will hear the chirp.
8. Check that the levels are reasonable.
If necessary, adjust the sound card
output level, the microphone gain
switch and the output Attenuator
for the Loudspeaker Test Jig. You
will find that once you are set up
for testing, these don’t change often.
9. Watch the levels; if the outputs or
inputs clip, you will get odd results.
If this happens, investigate the
cause and correct it.
10. You will see the result pop up in a
window similar to that in Screen 6,
a very rough plot of a speaker done
on our workbench.
11. You can change the smoothing setting, show a waterfall plot, show
distortion and a range of other plots
from this measurement, which is
pretty impressive.
Tips
● The room will play havoc with far-
field measurements. If you do this
in a room, you will never get a 20Hz
to 20kHz plot without all sorts of
peaks and dips. Just accept this.
● You will need to apply smoothing
to get a plot anything like what you
see in Hi-Fi magazines, as that is
what they do.
● Testing outside is good; the ground
is always there, though. This will
generate ‘ground bounce’, which is
perfectly natural, and you need to
work around this unless you point
your speaker up and hang your
microphone from a ladder. Yes, we
have done this!
From here, we recommend that
you explore some of the excellent
Screen 8: an impedance plot of the 10W calibration resistor in Speaker Workshop. It’s a bit noisier than the equivalent
REW plot, but it demonstrates that the measurement system is accurate from about 5Hz to over 20kHz. Note that this plot
was made as part of the verification process of the Loudspeaker Test Jig.
42
Practical Electronics | June | 2024
resources on the Internet for these
programs. REW is more active, but
Speaker Workshop has a strong following. The DIY audio community
has several quite active groups. ‘DIY
Audio’ is a good place to start finding like-minded people.
Reproduced by arrangement with
SILICON CHIP magazine 2024.
www.siliconchip.com.au
How to get Speaker Workshop up and running
If you want to try out Speaker Workshop, read relevant parts of the ‘unofficial
manual’ on the download page at: www.claudionegro.com
Ignore the ‘failed to update system registry’ warning on startup. You must
set up a project:
1. Create a new file by clicking on ‘File’ then ‘New’.
2. This program works by adding resources to the ‘system’. Resources might
be an enclosure, driver or network.
3. You need to add a driver at minimum. To do this, open the ‘Resource’ menu
and select ‘New’ then ‘Driver’. You need to select this to make measurements – see Screen 7.
To calibrate the system:
1. From the ‘Options’ menu, select ‘Calibrate’.
2. Make sure there are no leads connected to the Amp and DUT jumpers on
the Test Jig.
3. Switch the Jig to ‘Comp’ and switch the measurement attenuator out. In this
position, both sound card channels measure the amplified output.
4. Click ‘Test’ on the channel difference box. Follow the instructions to run the
calibration, finishing with ‘OK’ to accept it.
After calibration, look at the bottom left of the screen. This shows the digital
values read in the calibration. The maximum must always be less than ±32768
and ideally in the 10,000-20,000 region. Adjust your PC’s output level and Jig
attenuator setting until you get sensible readings. We generally find that an
output level in the region of 40% works well.
To set the Reference, open the ‘Options’ menu, then the ‘Preferences’ tab.
Click on the ‘Impedance’ tab and type the exact resistance of your reference
resistor in the Impedance Jig definition box.
To make an impedance test:
1. Connect your DUT between the DUT and ground terminals.
2. Select the driver we created earlier. It will become highlighted in blue.
3. Open the ‘Measure’ menu and click on ‘Impedance’.
4. Once the measurement is complete, check that the values at the lower left
of the screen are reasonable. You should see a window pop up with the
measurement, as shown in Screen 8. Our Low Ohms Meter measured this
resistor as 10.09W.
5. If the impedance plot is very fuzzy, check that you are not clipping the sound
card or amplifier.
To make a speaker frequency response test:
1. Switch the Jig to SPKR.
2. Switch the attenuator next to the DUT connector in.
3. Connect a driver to the AMP output, not the DUT output.
4. Plug in your test microphone and place it close to your speaker.
5. Click on the driver icon you created and then select the ‘Measure’ pulldown,
select the ‘Frequency response’ tab, then ‘Nearfield’.
6. You should get a reasonably clean frequency response. It will have more
noise than one from REW and may need smoothing. If the frequency response
graph is very fuzzy, check that you are not clipping the sound card or amplifier.
Screen 7: to use Speaker Workshop with the Test Jig, you must create a ‘driver’
instance and set some critical parameters.
Practical Electronics | June | 2024
www.poscope.com/epe
- USB
- Ethernet
- Web server
- Modbus
- CNC (Mach3/4)
- IO
- PWM
- Encoders
- LCD
- Analog inputs
- Compact PLC
- up to 256
- up to 32
microsteps
microsteps
- 50 V / 6 A
- 30 V / 2.5 A
- USB configuration
- Isolated
PoScope Mega1+
PoScope Mega50
- up to 50MS/s
- resolution up to 12bit
- Lowest power consumption
- Smallest and lightest
- 7 in 1: Oscilloscope, FFT, X/Y,
Recorder, Logic Analyzer, Protocol
decoder, Signal generator
43
|