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Acoustics 2015 Hunter Valley 15-18 November 2015Abstract: Is our instrumentation moving with the times? Our current instrumentation owes it genesis to the condenser microphone, simple valve amplifiers and moving coil displays. The existence of highly integrated alternative devices for sound measurement, Micro-Electro-Mechanical-Systems microphones, are now familiar to all users of modern smart phones but not (yet) widely to acousticians. The standard for instrumentation, currently IEC 61672-1:2002 describes instruments with an analogue front end and a “don’t care” processing engine and sets, as it must, accuracy and stability requirements. The analogue part effectively precludes a fully digital system, from getting certification. Are the standards, formed last century, holding back some potential advances to the betterment of measurement and data processing? This paper, using a currently available MEMS data logging sound level meter as an example, looks at the advantages of a fully digital device and poses the question “Why Not?”
Is our instrumentation moving with the times? Our current instrumentation owes it genesis to the condenser microphone, simple valve amplifiers and moving coil displays. The existence of highly integrated alternative devices for sound measurement, Micro-Electro-Mechanical-Systems microphones, are now familiar to all users of modern smart phones but not (yet) widely to acousticians. The standard for instrumentation, currently IEC 61672-1:2002 describes instruments with an analogue front end and a “don’t care” processing engine and sets, as it must, accuracy and stability requirements. The analogue part effectively precludes a fully digital system, from getting certification. Are the standards, formed last century, holding back some potential advances to the betterment of measurement and data processing? This paper, using a currently available MEMS data logging sound level meter as an example, looks at the advantages of a fully digital device and poses the question “Why Not?”