A New THD+N Algorithm for Measuring Today's High Resolution Audio Systems

Roney A, Temme S. A New THD+N Algorithm for Measuring Today's High Resolution Audio Systems. In: AES Convention 143. Audio Engineering Society; 2017. Paper 9900. Available from: https://aes.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=19297

@inproceedings{Roney2017_19297,
  author = {Roney, Alfred and Temme, Steve},
  title = {{A New THD+N Algorithm for Measuring Today's High Resolution Audio Systems}},
  booktitle = {AES Convention 143},
  note = {Paper 9900},
  year = {2017},
  month = oct,
  publisher = {Audio Engineering Society},
  url = {https://aes.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=19297}
}

TY  - CPAPER
TI  - A New THD+N Algorithm for Measuring Today's High Resolution Audio Systems
AU  - Roney, Alfred
AU  - Temme, Steve
T2  - AES Convention 143
M1  - Paper 9900
PY  - 2017
DA  - 2017/10/06
UR  - https://aes.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=19297
PB  - Audio Engineering Society
LA  - en
AB  - We present a mathematical definition of Total Harmonic Distortion + Noise suitable for testing high-resolution digital audio systems. This formal definition of the "distortion analyzer" mentioned in AES17 defines THD+N as the RMS error of fitting a sinusoid to a noisy and distorted sequence of measurements. We present the key theoretical result that under realistic conditions a modern THD+N analyzer is well-described by a Normal probability distribution with a simple relationship between relative error and analysis dwell time. These findings are illustrated by comparing the output of a commercial distortion analyzer to our proposed method using Monte Carlo simulations of noisy signal channels. We will demonstrate that the bias of a well-designed distortion analyzer is negligible.
ER  -