Measurements and tests

 

Measurements and tests

You need a tool to analyze the frequency response of your pre-amplifier? You want to create a waterfall-diagram of the sound reproduction in your living room? You only need a high-quality wave-generator? You need to check if your digital-audio interface transmits the correct status bits?

For many of these application you had to spend thousands of dollars for specialized equipment.  Today, you can do this and much more easily with a Raspberry Pi, a HiFiBerry sound card and the right software. Tools like sox can be used for all kinds of test tone generation, recording and analysis. REW and a HiFiBerry Mic will allow you to do all kinds of acoustics measurements.

Can a HiFiBerry-based system replace your $30000 audio analyzer? It depends. There are definitely lots of use cases that a specialized instrument will perform better. We’re still using different kinds of audio analyzers in our lab during development phase. However, there are many use cases  that just don’t require these expensive tools. If you only need to generate a 1kHz test tone – a HiFiBerry DAC+ and sox will do the job just fine.