Practical Test & Measurement: Loudspeaker Measurements at Home - A Guide for Building Your Own Test Chamber

Our friend Geoff Hill, the inventor of the original tetrahedral test chamber (TTC), explores how to do loudspeaker measurements at home. For those of us without an anechoic chamber at home, Hill explains how to build our own test chamber. With the build description, he also provides a valuable guide on alternative loudspeaker measurement techniques. This article was originally published in audioXpress, September 2020.

Our always popular loudspeaker edition is now available online and in print! audioXpress' Speaker Builder, Speaker Focus edition covers loudspeaker building, design, and testing with a balanced amount of DIY, speaker history, theory, R&D, and manufacturing articles. Read two articles about speaker history, a review of the Magnepan LRS, explore the details of two amazing speaker builds, and learn how to do loudspeaker measurements at home. And there's much more in speaker research and development, measurement, and production!

Spectral Measurement (formerly the Test & Measurement division of Prism Sound) has signed a licensing deal with UK-based Hill Acoustics enabling it to manufacture and sell the company’s Loudspeaker Test Chambers. Hill Acoustics’ LTC range includes a selection of Tetrahedral Test Chambers (TTCs) as well as other geometries that provide test and measurement solutions for loudspeakers, providing an effective, low cost solution that removes the need for large anechoic chambers.

Our longtime columnist Richard Honeycutt shares his insights on Geoff Hill’s recently released book, Loudspeaker Modelling and Design: A Practical Introduction, which demonstrates modern software and hardware being applied to the processes behind loudspeaker design and modeling. Learn more about this indispensable work, now available from publisher Routledge / Focal Press. This article was originally published in audioxpress, February 2019.

Get to the bench, it's Test and Measurement time. In this edition, you will find a Market Update with the latest audio measurement solutions available to the audio industry. Stuart Yaniger reviews the new Earphone Audio Response System from miniDSP, Joe Begin explains how to measure speech intelligibility, and Jonathan Novick details how to use external attenuators for measurements. Geoff Hill discusses why total system efficiency should be the target in loudspeaker design, and Dimitri Danyuk explores a discrete high output current buffer with JFET input.

The Hill Acoustics Tetrahedral Test Chamber (TTC) produces consistently accurate results when measuring loudspeakers. Voice Coil received a unit for testing and details the main features and benefits of this solution intended to remove environment and measurement geometry inconsistencies. The new test chambers support loudspeaker measurements to the new international standard IEC60268-21. This article was originally published in Voice Coil, November 2014.