Monday 2 December 2013

Just How Can Manufacturers Of Outdoor Cordless Speakers Increase The Noise Performance?

By Linda Cullmann


It is easy to be bewildered by the language which wireless loudspeaker suppliers use in order to depict the performance of their products. I will clarify the meaning of a commonly utilized parameter: "signal-to-noise ratio" in order to help you make an informed choice when purchasing a new a couple of wireless loudspeakers.

Whilst trying to find a couple of cordless loudspeakers, you initially are going to check the cost, power amongst additional basic criteria. Nonetheless, after this initial choice, you will still have numerous models to choose from. Next you are going to focus more on a number of of the technical specs, such as signal-to-noise ratio and harmonic distortion. Every wireless loudspeaker will produce a certain level of hiss and hum. The signal-to-noise ratio will help compute the amount of hiss generated by the loudspeaker.

You can perform a straightforward comparison of the cordless speaker noise by short circuiting the transmitter input, setting the speaker gain to maximum and listening to the loudspeaker. The hiss which you hear is generated by the wireless speaker itself. After that compare different sets of wireless loudspeakers according to the next rule: the smaller the level of noise, the better the noise performance of the cordless loudspeaker. Yet, keep in mind that you have to set all sets of cordless loudspeakers to amplify by the same level to compare several models.

To help you compare the noise performance, wireless loudspeaker makers publish the signal-to-noise ratio in their wireless speaker spec sheets. Simply put, the larger the signal-to-noise ratio, the smaller the amount of noise the cordless speaker creates. One of the reasons why wireless loudspeakers produce noise is the fact that they use elements such as transistors as well as resistors that by nature produce noise. Given that the built-in power amp overall noise performance is mostly determined by the performance of elements situated at the amp input, producers will attempt to pick low-noise components when designing the amplifier input stage of their cordless loudspeakers.

Static is also created by the cordless transmission. Different styles of transmitters are available that work at different frequencies. The cheapest sort of transmitters utilizes FM transmission and commonly broadcasts at 900 MHz. The level of hiss is also dependent upon the amount of cordless interference from other transmitters. Newer products are going to usually use digital music transmission at 2.4 GHz or 5.8 GHz. This type of audio transmission offers better signal-to-noise ratio than analog style transmitters. The level of noise depends on the resolution of the analog-to-digital converters as well as the quality of other components.

The majority of of today's cordless speaker use amplifiers which are based on a digital switching topology. These amplifiers are known as "class-D" or "class-T" amplifiers. Switching amps incorporate a power stage which is continuously switched at a frequency of around 400 kHz. This switching noise may result in a certain level of speaker distortion yet is generally not included in the signal-to-noise ratio which merely considers noise between 20 Hz and 20 kHz.

The signal-to-noise ratio is measured by inputting a 1 kHz test signal 60 dB underneath the full scale and measuring the noise floor of the signal generated by the built-in amp. The volume of the cordless speaker is pair such that the full output wattage of the built-in amplifier can be achieved. Next, the noise floor between 20 Hz and 20 kHz is measured and the ratio to the full-scale signal computed. The noise signal at different frequencies is eliminated through a bandpass filter during this measurement.

An additional convention in order to state the signal-to-noise ratio uses more subjective terms. These terms are "dBA" or "A weighted". You are going to discover these terms in the majority of wireless speaker spec sheets. This method tries to evaluate in how far the cordless speaker noise is perceived by human hearing which is most sensitive to signals at frequencies at 1 kHz. The A-weighted signal-to-noise ratio is generally higher than the unweighted ratio and is shown in a lot of wireless speaker parameter sheets.




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