Speaker workshop newbie

[Sdiver2489]

I know you guys probably get tired of hearing questions about people that can't get it to work, but maybe you guys can help me find my problem faster than I could by myself.

I built two cables. I went out and bought two stereo miniplug connectors. I came home and soldered a 2 wires to one and 3 to the other.

The first has wires coming out of:

-Left
-Ground

The second has wires coming out of

-Left
-Right
-Ground

I assume I am right when I say ground is the large "terminal" that wraps around the other wires.

I then hooked this up to a crappy test speaker and plugged the miniplug with two wires into the R/L out on the SB audigy 2 ZS and the miniplug with 3 wires into the LINE IN. Now, after search a bit I see I should have muted everything except wave out and line in, so I will try that tomorrow when I hook it up again, but I doubt that was causing ALL hte problems. When I tried to run a test the speaker hissed for about 1 second. The graphs varied from a jarbeled mess to something that just looked like random noise in a steady signal. Nothing that would be of any value.

The instructions for Speaker Workshop are good for the use of the program but don't do much to explain setting everything up.

Also, if someone has the approx. input impedence of this sound card and wants to share it would save me some time tomorrow. Thanks for putting up with this lol.

[jbateman]

You can measure a driver's impedance using just cables, but if you haven't gone through the calibration procedure first, it isn't gonna work. And if you don't use an external amplifier it won't work very well, anyway.

Try reading up at this site:

http://paginas.terra.com.br/educacao/claudionegro/english/

There is also a tutorial here:

http://www.speakerworkshop.com/SW/Project/Main.htm

And there is a third party user manual here:

http://www.audiodiycentral.com/ntutorials.shtml

[GrahamT]

I found the Claudio site very helpful. I also have an Audigy2 and only needed the external amp for the acoustic measurements.

The sound card impedance is not important. It was recommended that I skip that.

You can figure out which terminal belongs to which channel by hooking up the DVOM and measuring continuity. You will need the DVOM anyway for measuring the resistors.

One more tip, mute everything you dont need in the volume and recording controls and then start with all the levels too low, and slowly bring them up.

Hope this helps.

[Sdiver2489]

It seems like no matter what I do my output for the calibration test is always shown as clipping, even when the volume is at its lowest point. Anyone have any ideas?

[jbateman]

Maybe the first thing you should try to do is to get SW to record a signal. If you open up the SAMPLE.SWD file, selct Resource/New/Signal and give it a name, like SINEWAVE. Then right click on SINEWAVE, select properties. It will probably already be set for 1000Hz sinewave.

You should be able to connect a standard stereo cable between the line out and line in of your sound card. Then hilight SINEWAVE, Click on the SOUND menu, select RECORD. After recording the signal, now open up the sinewave.in.l and sinewave.in.r measurements.
You need to get something that looks like this:


If you can get that far, or close, you can also look at the HELP menu/INDEX/CommandsOptions Menu/Preferences/Pref dialog/DEBUG, and read up on the part about LATENCY.

Good luck