PassMark SoundCheck™ is a Windows based application that allows users to test their PC sound card, speakers and microphone. Verify that your sound card can record and playback sounds at various audio sample rates. Check the capability of your speakers to reproduce the highest and lowest frequencies (and your capability to hear these frequencies). Create perfectly formed test tones and loop them back into your sound card to look for distortion using PassMark audio loopback cables. SoundCheck also provides an audio FX test and a surround sound test to analyse those advanced sound card features.
Stereo or mono sound can be recorded and played back at a variety of sample rates and resolutions. SoundCheck includes a built-in tone generator that allows test tones to be generated at a selected frequency and sampling rate. This can be done using waveforms such as sine waves, saw tooth waves, white noise, and square waves. The waveform can be plotted and frequency spectrum graphed in real time using fast Fourier transform algorithms.
While all Windows plug and play sound cards (Crystal, Yamaha, Creative sound blaster, ESS, etc..) are compatible, not all sound cards will support the full range of sample rates. Also, not all PC's will have the speed to support a real time display when high sample rates are used. In this case the display Frame rate may need to be lowered.
Important note: Please make sure your mixer settings are correct before trying to record with SoundCheck. See the included help file for details on how to do this. If they are not correct you will get a silent recording.
The following are some examples of loopback testing using SoundCheck.
Figure 1. This is the output wave form - a 400Hz sawtooth wave at 44Khz sample rate. |
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Figure 2. The same 400Hz wave form after passing through speakers and microphone. |