Speaker Workshop, help please

[Grahamt]

I installed a new sound card, sound blaster live 24bit.
I have done dozens of searches and read hundreds of posts, and I need help.

I am following the Claudio calibration process with his jig. I have tested the jig with the DMM and all the soldering connections. I have done the volume checks, latency etc.

When I tested the sound card with my 10k ohm resistor I get:

card impedance: 513 k ohm

card capacitance: "1.$M"

Both are garbage measurements obviously.

When I input arbitrary numbers for the card, then try the impedance calibration I get "warning open circuit, check connections"

I have read to check interchannel delay, I dont know how to do this.
The Jig is exactly as shown on Claudio's site, and it worked on my old sound card.

Any help or suggestions are very much appreciated.

[bzdang]

Check your mail Graham!

[Depth Charge]

Hi there guys.

I have been playing around with Speaker Workshop recently, and with some success too. However, now I too have have this

"Warning. You seem to have an open circuit at the jig input instead of a resistance. Check your connections carefully."

message. It is very irritating since I did have the impedance testing working fine untill a few days ago. I've been trying to think what could have happened in between to cause this. One thing I did do was enter input impedance and capacitance for the sound card manually. I have my sound card input and outputs plugged into my amplifier tape loop and my jig plugged into another amplifier input. A little strange but deffinetly works. So for the sound card input impedance and capacitance I entered the values for my amp input (wich I got from the manual) manually.

Does anyone know how to fix this problem? I think I may just reinstall Speaker Workshop if I can't get it working again soon.

bzdang, if you think that whatever you e-mailed Graham may help me, could you let me in on what that is? Thanks.

[bzdang]

Hi Depth Charge,
Graham and I have met and live near each other, I sent him my telephone number so that I could ask him a few questions before giving him my advice.
I suggested that he download audiotester[.de] and try it out before spending any more time on Speaker Workshop, which has great capabilities but has been responsible for much frustration and graying of hair. I definitely could justify the cost of a commercial measuring system for the time and late nights spent reading the forums and trying to get it working. On the other hand Audiotester worked right out of the box and can be fully evaluated as shareware. I've paid the author for it and it was the best money that I've ever spent in this hobby.
Regards,
Dave

[Grahamt]

Thanks Dave,

I'll give audiotester a try. I'll also try SW once more since I have invested so much time in it already.

I have installed an Audigy 2 card now. This time all I installed were the drivers, no fancy 7.1 stuff like before.

Hope this works, knock on wood.

[Depth Charge]

Ok, I have impedance mesurments working again. I don't know what went wrong or what I apparently did to fix it but I'm not getting that daft message telling me that I havn't wired things up properly any more.

bzdang, I havn't spent much time with Speaker Workshop (10 hours or so) and have managed to get most things working fine, although it is not entirely a walk in the park I've found it to be not too bad so far. There are a few things that I'm not sure how to do (like useing the crossover design tools and the graphs to go with) but on the whole it's not been tooooooo bad. I think I will give Audiotester a go though because of what you have said about it. I already have the demo downloaded anyway. If I decide to buy it it's not too expensive either.

Thanks for the advice. Will install Audiotester at some point I'm sure. It would be nice to know what caused this error message that Grahamt and I have had incase it happens again though.

Cheers.