Your Cart is Empty
A Clean Audio Installation Guide™
Benchmark's "Clean Audio Installation Guide™"
By Allen H. Burdick
"Required Reading!"
This 24 page guide has been very popular. It has been hailed as “required reading for all broadcast engineers” by Richard Sequerra.
“We were able to change our engineering standards throughout the CBC as a result of this paper.” - Tom Holden Manager, Systems Engineering - Radio, CBC Toronto.
This paper revolutionized broadcast audio in the 1980's. It moved the industry away from 600-Ohm interfaces and radically changed the way analog audio was handled in professional environments.
In many ways, this paper still impacts every product that Benchmark builds today. We think that you will find this classic paper as useful today as it was when it was originally published in the 1980's. Due to the popularity of this paper, Allen updated it several times. The links will take you to Allen's final 1997 version.
We agree with Richard Sequerra. This is your required reading assignment!
Also in Audio Application Notes
Making Sound with Plasma - Hill Plasmatronics Tweeter
At the 2023 AXPONA show in Chicago, I had the opportunity to see and hear the Hill Plasmatronics tweeter. I also had the great pleasure of meeting Dr. Alan Hill, the physicist who invented this unique device.
The plasma driver has no moving parts and no diaphragm. Sound is emitted directly from the thermal expansion and contraction of an electrically sustained plasma. The plasma is generated within a stream of helium gas. In the demonstration, there was a large helium tank on the floor with a sufficient supply for several hours of listening.
While a tank of helium, tubing, high voltage power supplies, and the smell of smoke may not be appropriate for every living room, this was absolutely the best thing I experienced at the show!
- John Siau
Audio Calculators
We have added an "Audio Calculators" section to our webpage. Click "Calculators" on the top menu to see more like these:
System Performance Calculations
If an audio system is composed of multiple components, we may have detailed specifications for each component, but we will not know the performance of the combined system without doing some calculations. You may have questions such as these:
- Will my audio system produce audible noise?
- Will my audio system produce audible distortion?
- How will my audio components work together as a system?
- How loud will my audio system play?
Use Benchmark's online audio calculators to find answers!
For example, if we know the output power of an amplifier, as well as the sensitivity and impedance of our loudspeakers, we can calculate the maximum sound pressure level that our system can produce.
This application note provides interactive examples that help to answer the questions listed above.