Free software for testing analog equipment?

[Serpico]

The tricky thing with using software, and presumably your existing ADCs, is that in practice you could just be testing your ADC every time you take a measurement - the distortion and noise that is inherent in your ADC will skew the measurements you make of equipment connected through it.

[Dan Korneff]

Originally Posted by Serpico

the distortion and noise that is inherent in your ADC will skew the measurements you make of equipment connected through it.

Couldnt these programs "ping" a loop of your AD/DA and use that measurement of your converters to offset your results when testing analog gear?
just a thought

[Serpico]

Originally Posted by Dan Korneff

Couldnt these programs "ping" a loop of your AD/DA and use that measurement of your converters to offset your results when testing analog gear?
just a thought

I suspect not, but I'm guessing...
I had a quick google to see what was out there, and although I didn't find anything that matches the OP's requirements I did find this: Distortion Analysis toolkit, which I'm keen to try to see just what 'character' compression VSTs add in the way of distortion.

[Dan Korneff]

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[sat159p1]

Originally Posted by Serpico

The tricky thing with using software, and presumably your existing ADCs, is that in practice you could just be testing your ADC every time you take a measurement - the distortion and noise that is inherent in your ADC will skew the measurements you make of equipment connected through it.

Yeah I know. But how the analog equipment is tested? I mean those long features which all analogue EQ, comp, preamp has in there specs are measured with some kind of program (the RMAA is just like I was looking for, Dan. Thanks!)

[synthoid]

Originally Posted by sat159p1

Yeah I know. But how the analog equipment is tested? I mean those long features which all analogue EQ, comp, preamp has in there specs are measured with some kind of program (the RMAA is just like I was looking for, Dan. Thanks!)

Freestanding test equipment. Signal generators, oscilloscopes, test harnesses, etc. High-end test equipment these days can generate the finished plots / curves etc for an amazing number of standard tests and measurements. Alternatively they can send the data to a program running on a host that puts together the plot/graph from a stream of measurement points.
-synthoid

[YTCrazyTieGuy]

I just wanted to post this link:

NwAvGuy: RightMark Audio Analyzer

This article is probably overly harsh, especially considering that the writer doesn't know about anything that can bridge the gap between RMAA and $5000 testing equipment. But it's still worth reading. and of course RMAA is free, so there's nothing stopping you from trying it.

Edit: actually I'm going to take back the $5000 thing. http://www.audiotoolbox.us/. They have measuring gear costing from $400 to about $3000.