Loudspeaker Measurement - Colouration Analysis

Colouration Analysis

Loudspeakers differ from most other items of audio equipment in suffering from 'colouration'. This refers to the tendency of various parts of the speaker: the cone, its surround, the cabinet, the enclosed space, to carry on moving when the signal ceases. All forms of resonance cause this, by storing energy, and resonances with high Q factor are especially audible. Much of the work that has gone into improving speakers in recent years has been about reducing colouration, and Fast Fourier Transform, or FFT, measuring equipment was introduced in order to measure the delayed output from speakers and display it as a time vs. frequency waterfall plot or spectrogram plot. Initially analysis was performed using impulse response testing, but this 'spike' suffers from having very low energy content if the stimulus is to remain within the peak ability of the speaker. Later equipment uses correlation on other stimulus such as a Maximum length sequence analyser or MLSSA. Using multiple sine wave tones as a stimulus signal and analyzing the resultant output, Spectral Contamination testing provides a measure of a loudspeakers 'self-noise' distortion component. This 'picket fence' type of signal can be optimized for any frequency range, and the results correlate exceptionally well with sound quality listening tests.