Loudspeaker and Electroacoustic Test Products

Sonic beacon is a PC-based test and measurement system for the testing of loudspeakers and other electro-acoustic products using commercially available Windows multimedia sound cards. Sonic beacon will perform Frequency and Phase Response, Harmonic and Intermodulation Distortion, Polarity, Impedance, Sensitivity and SPL as well as other FFT and Real Time Analysis tests, Sixteen bit sampling rates up to 192 kHz and FFT lengths up to 128K points are supported.

Sonic beacon contains six different virtual instruments that can be cascaded in order to form a process. An input signal emanating from a WAVE audio file, the Signal generator or a sound card may be passed serially from one module to another. Each module performs a process on this signal and alters its time or frequency domain representation. If the modules are coherently cascaded a sensible analysis can be done on the input signal.

It also contains a unique calibration algorithm that allows for the compensation of input level, latency and frequency response errors in personal computer sound card electronics. These calibrations may be saved to a file and subsequently recalled and applied to any new process that uses the sound card.

Multiple process streams may be opened within the application and will execute simultaneously. Multiple instances of the application can also be opened. Data may be transferred to and from instances of the application, processes, text editors and spreadsheets using the Windows clipboard. Modules may be added or deleted at any point in a process stream and all existing instruments, in the process, will retain their current settings. Process streams may be saved to disk and all instruments will retain their current settings, size and location when recalled.

Any module with a display screen may be previewed or printed. Debugging options include Pause on Every Module and Pause On Every nth Record.

The following virtual instrument modules are available

1. WAVE File Open Module: Opens a PCM file and converts it data to the internal FFT records required by the processing application.

2. Signal Generator Module: Outputs a variety of wave shapes at frequencies from 0 Hz to one half the current sample rate.

3. Arbitrary Filter Module: A digital filter with an arbitrary, programmable amplitude and phase response.

4. Oscilloscope Module: An oscilloscope module that displays two channels of time domain data

5. Spectrum Analyzer Module: A two channel Spectrum Analyzer module that can perform FFT’s, Cross Correlations and FHT’s Transforms on time domain data.

6. DataLogger Module: A color keyed, persistent plotting engine that can display data in either the time or frequency domain.

7. SoundIO Module: Records and plays audio signals on any PC sound card that is compatible with Windows multimedia services

8. WAVE File Save Module: Converts digital signal data generated by a stream of process modules to RIFF and saves it to disk as a PCM Waveform audio file (.WAV).

What We Do

Sonic beacon produces electrical and acoustical data acquisition and analysis software for the Windows operating system.

About Us

Sonic beacon is a Canadian organization founded in 1997. It is located in Pakenham Ontario which is near Ottawa, Canada. Ottawa is also home to the National Research Council of Canada's anechoic chamber, a key facility for acoustics testing. The chamber has been instrumental in the development of Canadian loudspeakers, hearing aids and microphone arrays.

News and Events

February 22 2009: Sonic beacon Version 1.1.0.5 released. Flicker in the Oscilloscope, Spectrum Analyzer and Data-logger displays is eliminated. Dialog bar combo box control are changed to the drop-down list style. The Audio Mixer selection dialog now shows the currently selected mixer path when opened.