Today was an important day…

Much of my time was spent developing our production line testing procedures and standards for the new LX.

As we continue to eclipse our competitors with regards to technical advancements, R&D, and performance, our accomplishment today marks a very significant leap forward.

As many of you know, our QC procedures are second to none. Most manufacturers’ products are batch tested, meaning a few speakers from a large production line are tested. The vast majority are fully assembled and tested overseas with little oversight. Some manufacturers don’t even have their assembled speakers tested prior to packaging.

If speakers are tested, they typically use an LMS or CLIO measurement system. These measurement devices rely on gated measurements to remove the room. They are reliable and fast, but resolution is compromised due to gating. Various issues can and will slip through this type of QC testing.

Our production line test setup uses a MLSSA system with a calibrated Earthworks microphone. MLSSA is incredibly fast and offers powerful post processing mathematical functions. It does, however, rely on gating to remove the room so resolution isn’t ideal. Every single speaker we ship is fully tested using this setup prior to cleaning, packaging, and then shipping.

When I first announced our purchase of the Klippel NFS, I had mentioned recognizing the power that could come with combining NFS data with our MLSSA system.

Today is that day…

Our QC testing setup is in a dedicated off-limits area of our production line. This area is treated to reduce reflections and the environment never changes. No person (other than me) is allowed to touch the fixed microphone or move things around in this area. This way, the environment never changes, and measurements are consistent and reliable.

With our Klippel NFS, we now have the ability generate a true anechoic measurement of the highest resolution possible today. In theory, since our production line testing area does not change, by comparing an NFS generated on-axis response measurement of a speaker, with an ungated MLSSA measurement of the exact same speaker in our production line QC system, we should be able to extrapolate the exact room response of our QC setup.

Using the advanced mathematical processing capabilities of our MLSSA combined with proper stimulus configuration to closely match the NFS, we should technically be able to mathematically remove the room response from our QC tests and thus avoid having to gate the measurement. This would then provide a full range high resolution anechoic frequency response measurement of the DUT. This would allow us to catch any possible resonance or defect, while also giving the customer a frequency response printout that is accurate down to 20Hz! Presently, due to gating, our printed response measurements are accurate down to ~ 250Hz.

Today, after literally a ton of work – my theory was proven true.

Starting with the LX, customers will now receive a true full-range, high resolution, ungated anechoic on-axis frequency response measurement. This was one of my major reasons for our investment in the NFS, but I was unsure if it would even be possible or reliable. Turned out it is functioning better than I anticipated and our production line tests of LX now match our NFS measurements, from 20Hz – 20kHz.

I honestly don’t think any other company is even capable of providing a full range high resolution anechoic response measurement of each speaker a customer will be receiving. Certainly, Harman could do it, but that would require them doing their QC testing at their US facility – and that is not going to happen.

To the consumer, this engineering feat simply means even tighter quality control and a printed full-range high-res response measurement. To me though, this was a big one and something I have wanted to offer to our customers for a very long time now, but just wasn’t technically possible until now.

This new technology will eventually trickle down to our other products as well, but it will take some time.

In the meantime, LX customers are getting something truly unique with major industry advancements, and not just with the speakers themselves…

Enjoy!