Stock sound good enough for speaker design?

[joecarrow]

This just in: the stock sound chip on my Thinkpad T60 is starting to make me think that it might have what it takes to design speakers. I loaded Arta, and these are the promising points I found:

-Flat response between 100 hz and 10 khz
-THD of 0.015% in this range
-THD+noise of 0.15%
-3db down at 40 hz and 20khz

I have a Behringer ECM8000 and a small Behringer mixer with phantom power. Am I missing anything, or am I really about ready to start doing some measurements?

I understand that the noise floor is nothing to write home about- but if I understand correctly, it should be sufficient for identifying and avoiding any distortion components higher than -40 db. It won't tell me if the Accuton or the Scan Speak is superior- but I can't afford either of those so it's a moot point.

I just thought that this might be an interesting thread for everyone out there who's following the forum and thinking, "Wow, I wonder what MY speakers are doing?", but aren't really willing to make a big budget project out of getting some measurements.

So, do I have it right? Once I apply some calibration curve will this chip be able to give me a reasonably useful measurement?

[ThomasW]

Perform the standard loop-back test, save that as your soundcard file and you're good to go.

[spasticteapot]

From what I have seen, thinkpads have crummy internal audio. Otherwise, good laptops.

[joecarrow]

For what it's worth, my 2000 era T20 has audibly worse audio than my 2006 thinkpad T60.

Thomas, that's great to hear. I'll try to bring a little more measurement to the table in the future.