Anybody want to update this page? Go ahead and do it, please!
TESTING YOUR SOUNDCARD
"I'd recommend that people always check the output of their soundcards by at least digitally generating clean signals and playing them into an oscilloscope or signal analyser. The siggen suite contains tools for generating various waveforms for test purposes."
"Check mono, each stereo channel seperately (i.e. other channel playing silence) and each channel playing different waveforms and freqencies. You may be surprized at the amount of variation in performance signal cleanliness. You may be stuck with the card but at least you will be aware of its limitations!"
Note that, in theory, you could generate some signals internally with siggen, output them, connect the output to the input and re-record it, then analyze the results (or do it in realtime). At least that's the theory. I don't know what tools exist for meaningful analysis in Linux; there are various scopes and things but I haven't tried them. Also note that with this method, you'll be seeing the combined effects of your ADCs? and DACs?.
| Page history | Last edited Fri, 22 Feb 2008 15:27:18 -0600 | Edit this page |