Low-Cost Acoustic Measurments by Calibration of Consumer Grade Hardware

Abstract

Multiple sensors with excellent linearity and high precision are often necessary to investigate acoustic problems (e.g., beamforming, impedance tube, spacial decomposition). This paper explores a flexible acoustic measurement system consisting of low-cost consumer-grade hardware. A MEMS capsule is paired to a P48-compatible pre-amplifier to form the microphone, which can then be used with off-the-shelf microphone amplifiers and converters available from the consumer or pro audio industry. Because the converters use widely available protocols like ASIO, CoreAudio, and others, an open-source Python module can be used to conduct the measurements. The acoustic measurement system is first calibrated and then evaluated at each stage to examine its performance and find its weaknesses to be explored by future research.