Report of the Meeting of the SC-04-04 working group on microphone measurement and characterization of the SC-04 subcommittee on acoustics, held in New York 2015-10-31
The meeting was convened by chair D. Josephson.
The draft agenda and the meeting report from Warsaw, 2015-05-08, were approved as presented.
Open projects
AES42-R Review of AES42-2010: AES Standard for Acoustics - Digital interface for microphones
No new requirements for maintenance have been identified for AES42, it is planned that the standard will be presented for reaffirmation.
Development projects
AES-X085 Detailed Professional Microphone Specifications
Work continues in AES-X085 on the refinement of microphone self-noise metrics, and methods for assessing sensitivity to wind. There are directories for WG members to upload quasi-peak noise test files as previously discussed. The Matlab code provided by Hans Riekehof has been tested to work under Octave as well as Matlab. Juergen Breitlow continues to work on validation of this code as a hardware-independent implementation of the quasi-peak measurement, and reports good results comparing with known proprietary hardwar devices. A Linux measurement program has also been identified with similar goals.
A round-robin test program for microphone wind noise sensitivity is planned for 2016 with participation so far by Schoeps, Sennheiser, Neumann, Josephson and Rycote. Other manufacturers who wish to participate should contact Juergen so that a consensus can be reached on common test conditions.
Liaisons:
Continuing liaison is planned with IEC TC100. IEC 60268-4 stability date is 2017. Depending on the progress with AES-X85 we may suggest including these issues in the next revision of the IEC standard. IEC 61938 is also scheduled for a maintenance cycle, and we plan to focus on extending impedance measurements up to 100 kHz to address out-of-band issues.
New projects:
A new project proposal has been initiated for a parameter tree for remote control of microphones in networks, to be maintained in SC-04-04 and supplied to SC-02-12-M and SC-07-01. Breitlow has posted the current status of this discussion.
New business:
David Josephson announced that he was stepping down as chair of SC-04-04 effective the next meeting, and that Juergen Breitlow would be chairing the working group. Josephson will replace Jackie Green as vice-chair of SC-04-04 and will continue as chair of SC-04. Green sent her regrets at not being able to attend this meeting but has encouraged several of her colleagues at Audio Technica to join the effort.
The next meeting will be held in Paris, France, 2016-06, in conjunction with the AES 140th convention.
