It is easy to be perplexed by the terminology that cordless speaker makers employ to depict the performance of their products. I am going to clarify the meaning of a commonly used spec: “signal-to-noise ratio” to help you make an informed choice whilst buying a brand new a set of cordless loudspeakers. While trying to find a set of wireless speakers, you first are going to check the cost, power among other essential criteria. On the other hand, after this initial choice, you are going to still have numerous models to choose from. Now you are going to concentrate more on some of the technical specifications, like signal-to-noise ratio as well as harmonic distortion. The signal-to-noise ratio is a fairly important parameter and describes how much noise or hiss the cordless loudspeaker produces.
You can perform a straightforward comparison of the wireless loudspeaker hiss by short circuiting the transmitter input, setting the speaker volume to maximum and listening to the loudspeaker. You are going to hear some amount of hissing and/or hum coming from the loudspeaker. This noise is produced by the wireless loudspeaker itself. After that compare different sets of cordless loudspeakers according to the next rule: the smaller the level of hiss, the better the noise performance of the cordless speaker. However, bear in mind that you have to set all sets of wireless speakers to amplify by the same amount to compare different models. When looking at the cordless loudspeaker spec sheet, you want to look for a couple of wireless speaker with a large signal-to-noise ratio figure which suggests that the wireless loudspeakers output a low level of noise. One of the reasons why cordless loudspeakers generate noise is the fact that they utilize elements like transistors and resistors which by nature produce noise. Because the built-in power amplifier overall noise performance is mostly determined by the performance of elements located at the amplifier input, makers are going to try to select low-noise parts while designing the amp input stage of their wireless outdoor speakers introduced at this hyperlink. The cordless transmission itself also causes static which is most noticable with products which utilize FM transmission at 900 MHz. Other wireless transmitters are going to interfer with FM type transmitters and result in further hiss. As a result the signal-to-noise ratio of FM style wireless loudspeakers varies depending on the distance of the speakers from the transmitter plus the amount of interference. To avoid these problems, newer transmitters employ digital audio broadcast and usually transmit at 2.4 GHz or 5.8 GHz. The signal-to-noise ratio of digital transmitters is independent from the distance of the wireless speakers. It is determined by how the audio signal is sampled. In addition, the quality of components inside the transmitter are going to affect the signal-to-noise ratio. The majority of today’s wireless speakers have built-in power amplifiers that incorporate a power switching stage which switches at a frequency around 500 kHz. This switching frequency is also noise that is part of the amplified signal. Nonetheless, modern cordless loudspeakerspecifications generally only consider the hiss between 20 Hz and 20 kHz.
Manufacturers measure the signal-to-noise ratio by setting the built-in amplifier such that the full output swing can be realized and by inputting a test tone to the transmitter which is normally 60 dB below the full scale of the loudspeaker amp. After that, only the hiss in the range of 20 Hz and 20 kHz is considered. The noise at different frequencies is removed by a filter. Next the level of the noise energy in relation to the full-scale output power is calculated and shown in decibel. Frequently you will discover the term “dBA” or “a-weighted” in your wireless loudspeaker parameter sheet. A weighting is a technique of showing the noise floor in a more subjective manner. This method attempts to evaluate in how far the wireless speaker noise is perceived by human hearing which is most responsive to signals at frequencies at 1 kHz. An A-weighted signal-to-noise ratio weighs the noise floor according to the human hearing and is normally higher than the unweighted signal-to-noise ratio.