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Article: Sound card to the rescue.(Instruments)
- Article from:
- Test & Measurement World
- Article date:
- June 1, 2003
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. (US). This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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PROJECT DESCRIPTION
Sometimes, consumer products can perform the measurements you need at a fraction of the cost of industrial test equipment. When Richard Schrader, electrical project engineer at Tracewell Systems (Westerville, OH, www.tracewell.com), learned that a cable-test project called for an obsolete spectrum analyzer, he looked for a substitute. His research uncovered a high-end consumer-grade sound card ($199.99) and inexpensive audio software ($99.95). A standard sound card's 16-bit resolution was insufficient for the measurements, but a high-end sound card's 24-bit analog-to-digital converter (ADC) had the resolution he needed.
The sound ...