Some Technical Suggestions For Buying A Set Of Cordless Speakers

By Lisa Stein


Are you looking to acquire a new a couple of cordless loudspeakers for your home? You may be dazzled by the amount of options you have. In order to make an informed selection, it is best to familiarize yourself with frequent specs. One of these specifications is referred to as "signal-to-noise ratio" and is not often understood. I will help clarify the meaning of this expression.

As soon as you have narrowed down your search by glancing at several basic criteria, including the level of output power, the dimensions of the loudspeakers and the price, you will still have quite a few models to choose from. Now it is time to take a look at a few of the technical specs in more detail. An important parameter of wireless speakers is the signal-to-noise ratio. To put it simply, the signal-to-noise ratio describes how much hum or hiss the loudspeakers will add to the audio signal. This ratio is commonly shown in decibel or "db" for short.

You can make a simple assessment of the cordless loudspeaker hiss by short circuiting the transmitter input, setting the loudspeaker gain to maximum and listening to the loudspeaker. The noise that you hear is produced by the wireless speaker itself. Make certain that the gain of each set of cordless speakers is couple to the same level. Otherwise you will not be able to objectively compare the level of hiss between different models. The general rule is: the lower the amount of hiss that you hear the higher the noise performance.

If you prefer a set of cordless speakers with a small amount of hissing, you may look at the signal-to-noise ratio figure of the data sheet. A lot of manufacturers will show this number. cordless speakers with a large signal-to-noise ratio are going to output a low amount of noise. Noise is produced due to several factors. One reason is that modern wireless speakers all use components such as transistors plus resistors. Those elements will produce some amount of noise. Generally the elements which are situated at the input stage of the built-in power amp will contribute most to the overall noise. Thus suppliers typically are going to select low-noise elements whilst designing the wireless loudspeaker amp input stage.

The wireless broadcast itself also causes noise which is most noticable with models which make use of FM transmission at 900 MHz. The amount of static is also dependent upon the level of wireless interference from other transmitters. Modern types will generally make use of digital audio broadcast at 2.4 GHz or 5.8 GHz. This style of audio transmission provides better signal-to-noise ratio than analog type transmitters. The level of static is dependent on the resolution of the analog-to-digital converters and also the quality of other components.

The majority of recent cordless loudspeakers have built-in power amps that incorporate a wattage switching stage which switches at a frequency around 500 kHz. This switching noise may result in some amount of loudspeaker distortion yet is frequently not included in the signal-to-noise ratio which only considers noise between 20 Hz and 20 kHz.

Makers measure the signal-to-noise ratio by setting the built-in amp such that the full output swing may be achieved and by inputting a test signal to the transmitter which is typically 60 dB underneath the full scale of the loudspeaker amp. After that the noise-floor energy is calculated in the frequency range between 20 Hz and 20 kHz and compared with the full scale signal energy.

Often you will find the expression "dBA" or "a-weighted" in your wireless loudspeaker spec sheet. A weighting is a method of expressing the noise floor in a more subjective fashion. This technique tries to examine in how far the cordless loudspeaker noise is perceived by human hearing which is most perceptive to signals at frequencies at 1 kHz. For that reason an A-weighting filter is going to magnify the noise floor for frequencies which are easily heard and suppress the noise floor at frequencies which are barely noticed. Most wireless speaker are going to show a higher A-weighted signal-to-noise ratio than the un-weighted ratio.




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