Fresh From the Bench: Audio Precision APx555 B Series Audio Analyzer

January 29 2020, 10:10
Stuart Yaniger offers his review of the latest Audio Precision APx555 B Series audio analyzer, and the corresponding new updated V5 software for the APx series.  He had less than one month to test Audio Precision's newest analyzers, and in this article he provides readers with a hint of the new expanded capabilities — both of the APx555 B Series hardware and the new APx500 5.0.1 software.
 

The APx B series now features a new High Performance Sine Generator and a High Performance Sine Analyzer, which Audio Precision claims reduces THD+N to better than -120 dB, with a 1 MHz bandwidth and Fast Fourier Transforms (FFTs) of up to 1.2 million points. This is a significant improvement over its previous series of instruments, which were certainly not slouches in the distortion and noise department. One might reasonably ask about the practicality of this improvement, but audioXpress had been dealing with multiple systems under review where measurements were limited by the analyzer, not the DUT.

When audioXpress was given the chance to have a B Series for a few weeks, Yaniger felt like "the coolest kid on the block." His article also explores how Audio Precision addressed the need to create new measurement routines, respond to the challenges of new classes of connected devices, and make the entire solution far more intuitive and simple to use.

With the announcement of its new APx555 B Series two-channel audio analyzer, Audio Precision also unveiled the updated version 5.X of its APx audio measurement software. Since December 2018, new APx analyzers, whether the new B Series or Legacy, ship with version 5.0 software and one year of software maintenance, effectively licensing that instrument for APx version 6.0 when it is released, as well as any minor releases that occur between versions 5.0 and 6.0.

This article was published in audioXpress, December 2019

Read the complete review now available here
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About Stuart Yaniger
Stuart Yaniger has been designing and building audio equipment for nearly half a century, and currently runs a technology consulting agency in western New York. His professional research interests have spanned theoretical physics, electronics, chemistry, spect... Read more

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