Testing Challenges in Personal Computer Audio Devices

摘要

The Personal Computer audio environment has evolved over the years to become a significant entity within the field of acquisition and rendering of audio information. The personal computer is a highly sophisticated interactive environment that is much more complex than a conventional dedicated home audio device, leading to new problem areas. These include, but are not limited to, stochastic interrupts, network accesses, disc I/O and disparate hardware qualities. While the environment of a highly matrixed multi-tasking concurrent operating system offers many opportunities to overcome quality issues, the PC, due to the media-rich tools and feature sets, is becoming the entertainment capture and rendering device of choice for future generations. Many of the quality issues have been focused on hardware, such as converter quality, power supply quality and component metrics. We will be focusing on software performance metrics which are, by definition, much more difficult to ascertain. We will address conventional audio measurements such as distortion, frequency response and signal-to-noise ratio, but will extend these to new depths and address the unique difficulties the PC environment adds to these tests. The tests will also include “glitch verification”, throughput latency, and MIDI latency.