Old Colony Sound Laboratory, P.O. Box 876, Peterborough, NH 03458-0876 USA
Concept
The Sound Strobe is a uniquely precise instrument that produces six
selectable spectrum shape pulse signals to help you identify problems with
your speakers and their interactions with your listening room. You can listen
to your speaker’s degree of image focus, transient precision, and tonal
neutrality.
Why not just use music to evaluate speakers?
Of course you should as the final judge. But music has immense variability,
and unless you made the recording yourself, you don’t know what studio
“tricks” were used. The Sound Strobe’s signals, on the other hand, are
perfectly repeatable and smoothly cover the entire audio frequency range of
hearing.
Fig. 1 in the AudioXpress article (visit Online) shows the various pulse spectrum
shapes; that is, the low-to-high frequency (tonal pitch) balance. These allow
focusing on various tonal ranges; response or imbalance problems can be
identified and room-position located. Then corrective measures can be
implemented (crossover changes, driver replacement, vented cabinet tuning,
sealed cabinet damping material added or removed, and speaker repositioning).
Often these problems are heard (and therefore correctible) more readily than
with music listening, due to the Sound Strobe’s precision, speed, and
repeatability. With music, you hear imperfect music reproduction, but the
Sound Strobe lets you hear the imperfections themselves.
The last page of the AudioXpress article (“Using the Sound Strobe”)
explains what to listen for (what the six pulse signals should sound like) by
easily building up an “experience base”. This then allows you to correlate the
pulse sounds with a variety of musical reproduction problems. Then
corrective action can be implemented with the pulse sounds “leading the
pathway” quickly; with great speed and precision, the best reproduction of a
wide variety of music will be obtained.