Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Just How Can Suppliers Of Wireless Home Speakers Enhance The Noise Performance?

By Linda Cullmann


To help you pick a pair of wireless speakers, I am going to describe the expression "signal-to-noise ratio" that is frequently utilized in order to express the performance of cordless loudspeakers.

Once you have selected a range of cordless loudspeakers, it is time to explore several of the specifications in more detail to help you narrow down your search to one product. Each wireless speaker will make a certain amount of hiss as well as hum. The signal-to-noise ratio will help quantify the level of hiss generated by the loudspeaker.

Comparing the noise level of several sets of cordless speakers may be accomplished quite easily. Simply gather several products which you want to evaluate and short circuit the transmitter audio inputs. Next set the cordless speaker gain to maximum and check the amount of noise by listening to the loudspeaker. You will hear some amount of hissing and/or hum coming from the loudspeaker. This noise is created by the cordless loudspeaker itself. After that compare several sets of wireless speakers according to the following rule: the smaller the amount of noise, the higher the noise performance of the wireless speaker. Yet, bear in mind that you must put all sets of cordless loudspeakers to amplify by the same level to compare several models.

If you favor a couple of cordless loudspeakers with a small level of hissing, you may look at the signal-to-noise ratio number of the spec sheet. Many suppliers will display this number. cordless speakers with a large signal-to-noise ratio are going to output a low amount of hiss. One of the reasons why wireless loudspeakers create noise is the fact that they use components like transistors as well as resistors which by nature generate noise. Typically the elements that are located at the input stage of the built-in power amp are going to contribute most to the overall hiss. Therefore suppliers normally will select low-noise elements while designing the cordless speaker amp input stage.

The cordless broadcast itself also creates hiss which is most noticable with models that make use of FM transmission at 900 MHz. Other wireless transmitters are going to interfer with FM type transmitters and result in additional static. Therefore the signal-to-noise ratio of FM type cordless loudspeakers changes depending on the distance of the loudspeakers from the transmitter plus the level of interference. To steer clear of these problems, modern transmitters use digital music broadcast and generally transmit at 2.4 GHz or 5.8 GHz. This type of audio transmission offers larger signal-to-noise ratio than analog type transmitters. The amount of static depends on the resolution of the analog-to-digital converters as well as the quality of other components.

Most of today's cordless loudspeakers use power amplifiers which are digital, also referred to as "class-d amps". Class-D amplifiers utilize a switching stage that oscillates at a frequency between 300 kHz to 1 MHz. This switching noise may result in some level of loudspeaker distortion yet is usually not included in the signal-to-noise ratio which only considers noise between 20 Hz and 20 kHz.

The most widespread method for measuring the signal-to-noise ratio is to set the cordless loudspeaker to a gain that allows the maximum output swing. Subsequently a test tone is input into the transmitter. The frequency of this signal is generally 1 kHz. The amplitude of this signal is 60 dB below the full scale signal. Then, the noise floor between 20 Hz and 20 kHz is calculated and the ratio to the full-scale signal computed. The noise signal at different frequencies is eliminated through a bandpass filter during this measurement.

Another convention to express the signal-to-noise ratio utilizes more subjective terms. These terms are "dBA" or "A weighted". You will find these terms in a lot of cordless loudspeaker parameter sheets. This technique was developed with the knowledge that human hearing perceives noise at different frequencies differently. Human hearing is most perceptive to signals around 1 kHz. On the other hand, signals below 50 Hz and higher than 13 kHz are barely noticed. An A-weighted signal-to-noise ratio weighs the noise floor in accordance to the human hearing and is typically higher than the unweighted signal-to-noise ratio.




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