Spectral Measurement (formerly Prism Sound Test & Measurement) has its roots in the recording industry and ambition in audio.
Before flying solo in 2019, Spectral Measurement was a part of the world’s leading audio company, Prism Sound. In this legacy article we shed some light on our heritage and how the company came to be and how the test and measurement division grew into its current form.
Prism Sound Heritage: 1987 to the present day
Prism Sound has worked behind the scenes of the international music industry, for 33 years and has considerably influenced recorded music. The world’s top recording studios, independent recording producers and engineers are equipped with Prism Sound A/D and D/A converters. Further along the production chain, many mastering studios use Prism Sound A/D and D/A conversion as their reference tool to create the final versions for CD or download files. Now younger music producers are learning why Prism Sound is the professional’s choice with the company’s new desktop recording interfaces.
The giants of consumer electronics, top pro-audio manufacturers, HiFi companies and many others making audio products use Prism Sound measurement technology to evaluate their own products in the R&D lab and on the production line. Prism Sound has been particularly successful in providing audio measurement solutions for the automotive industry.
If it wasn’t recorded, produced or played back on Prism Sound equipment, the music you are listening to might be playing on a device that has been tested using Prism Sound audio measurement technology. This page explains how all this happened: The Prism Sound story, from 1987 to the present day.
The Prism Sound Founders
The company was founded in 1987, by two electronics engineers sharing a lifelong passion for audio: Graham Boswell and Ian Dennis.
Pictured are Ian Dennis and Graham Boswell accepting a crystal bowl commemorating the Queen’s Award for International Trade 2011 at the company HQ in Cambridgeshire UK, from the Queen’s official representative, Sir Hugh Duberly KCVO CBE, The Lord Lieutenant of Cambridgeshire. Dennis and Boswell later visited Buckingham Palace to formally receive the Award from Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.
Boswell & Dennis met in 1981 while working on ground-breaking digital signal processing (DSP) technology at world-renowned audio mixing desk manufacturer Rupert Neve & Company in Cambridge, UK.
The Neve Years – before Prism Sound
Boswell and Dennis worked on digital audio technology and product development at Neve in Cambridge, UK in the years preceeding the founding of Prism Sound and while working there faced many challenges with the embryonic new technology. There were no convenient audio DSP chips – processors were built from the basic digital building blocks of what was then supercomputer technology. Neve received UK government funding as a result of the advanced work that was being undertaken and export licenses were apparently hard (impossible) to get for the new technology at first, although later a system was reputedly sold to a radio station in Russia. For all these early systems, the A/D and D/A converters were, well, a challenge!
The Neve DSP was the world’s first commercial audio mixing console using DSP.. These early digital consoles were installed by broadcasters, recording studios and mastering studios determined to be in the vanguard of technological innovation.
Prism Sound Consulting 1987 to 1993
From inception in October 1987 Prism Sound provided research & development consultancy specialising in digital audio, though working in many other sectors as well. A variety of projects were undertaken including work on a novel marine radar system for Kelvin Hughes beginning in 1988. Prism Sound’s work on this project contributed to a Queen’s Award for Kelvin Hughes: The Queen’s Award for Technological Achievement 1993, awarded for the “RSR100 River Radar system”. The Prism Sound work involved development of high precision analogue to digital (A/D) conversion for azimuth measurement in the radar antenna and novel techniques for generating compact high-definition graphic displays.
In 1991-2, Prism Sound developed the world’s first all-digital commentary and communications switching matrix commissioned by the BBC for the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. This was a mighty processing system. Drawing upon the experience of the Neve period, Boswell and Dennis created a modular matrix mixer expandable to 512 x 512 ports and capable of processing more than 250,000 real time faders! This product subsequently became an important market leader in broadcast intercom systems.
The company also worked on digital public address systems for London Underground, lighting control systems, power amplifiers, multitrack recorder control systems, early hard disk recording solutions, stereo digital processors, digital loudspeaker controllers for PA systems, the early development of the AES3 (AES/EBU), AES11 and AES10 (MADI) standards and more. Prism Sound also produced probably the first outboard digital EQ: The DEQ2400, an automated 4-band parametric digital equalizer add-on for the Neve DTC-1 Digital Transfer Console.
Prism Sound products: 1993 to 2000
1993 was the year that Prism Sound’s focus shifted from consulting and design to product development and manufacturing. Prism Sound professional audio products were now in regular production and the product catalogue included studio grade A/D and D/A converters, which immediately received many accolades for their audio transparency. Recording and re-mastering for the new digital medium of Compact Disc was booming and Prism Sound became the product of choice for the most critical users. The so-called “Classical” (we hate this label) recording community were enjoying strong demand and producers wanted the very best resolution for their new CD releases.
The first Prism Sound converters
A great deal of attention was focussed on the issues of dynamic range and low-level distortion. Prism Sound had learned from its experience at Neve a few years previously and produced the Prism Sound AD-1 (later upgraded to AD-124 – illustrated) which, through innovative engineering and exploitation of novel digital signal processing techniques, provided a step up in dynamic range performance and exceptional low-level clarity.
During this early period Prism Sound supplied clients such as Chandos Records, Chesky, Deutsche Gramophon, Floating Earth, Gimell Records, Linn Records and Quintessential Sound, a wonderful music production company run by Gabe Wiener who tragially died at the age of 26. Gabe’s legacy lives on at www.pgm.com and we recommend several of his recordings. 
Producers would often comment on the amazing low-level detail evident between takes – for example when the musicians had gone to lunch and all that could be heard was birds singing outside the recording space. These low level sounds simply could not be captured with the earlier generation of A/D converters.
Prism Sound converters were not limited to live stereo recording though. As the re-mastering of back catalogue for CD gathered pace, clients like Genesis bought converters for their famous studio “The Farm” to remaster their entire catalogue for CD release.
Another major remastering project of the mid-1990’s was Elton John’s “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”. According to John Tobler writing in the 1995 CD sleeve notes, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road ” … topped the UK LP chart at the end of 1973 after a residency of 21 months, while it topped the US chart for two months of its almost two years in the Billboard Top 200″. This was one of the first major album remasters for the new generation of digital technology pioneered by Prism Sound and SADIE’s workstation software that remains the preference for professional mastering engineers to this day.
Here’s what Elton’s producer Gus Dudgeon had to say about the Prism Sound and SADiE technology used on “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”:
“As the original producer, I would have used this equipment at the time (ie 1973), had it been available for mastering. The very nature of analogue recordings being transferred to vinyl demanded major compromises. With the benefits of digital sound these constraints are removed, and the recordings can be heard much closer to the reproduction we had originally intended.“
In 1993 the newly opened Metropolis Mastering studios ordered the first five AD-1 units sold. Since then virtually the entire output of Metropolis Mastering has employed Prism Sound converters (later models as well of course!) in the production signal path.
We couldn’t list all the records made there if we wanted to, but Metropolis are still doing the job, day after day! A nice example is John Davis’ award as 2016 MPG Mastering Engineer of the Year for his work on the Led Zeppelin Special Editions.
During this period, Prism Sound won business from all sectors of the recording industry around the world. The relationships with world leading mastering studios including Sterling Sound, Masterdisk and Precision Mastering continued from the Neve DSP days. Precision Mastering in Los Angeles is the former home of longtime Prism Sound user Stephen Marcussen now at Marcussen Mastering Los Angeles. Masterdisk was the home of legendary mastering engineers Bob Ludwig and Howie Weinberg. Masterdisk is now owned by Scott Hull, a Prism Sound customer and former member of Classic Sound, also a Prism Sound customer.
Sister company to Metropolis Mastering, Metropolis Recording Studios (a favourite of Queen’s Brian May!) installed multiple AD-124 and DA-1 converters in the then new Studio E (illustrated) built for Surround Sound mixing for film.
We learn that AES/EBU interfaces can affect converter performance..
Prism Sound chose to specialise in building the finest A/D and D/A converters, but the very necessary measurement of their performance in the digital domain was problematic. There had been few tools available during the Neve years and there was still little choice. Those that were available were extremely expensive.
The advent of the AES/EBU digital audio interface brought with it the need to test the digital bearer signal to ensure reliable transmission, in addition to analyzing the quality of the audio it contained.
Transmitting and receiving devices need to be synchronized and this introduced the question of clock stability and jitter. Prism Sound was one of the first to conduct and publish research in this area leading to amendments to the AES & EBU standards and a better understanding of some of the less obvious ways in which digital audio could be compromised.
Measurements of the AES/EBU interface required a new kind of test instrument. Follwing success in a competitive bid to supply analyzers for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), Prism Sound released the DSA-1 AES/EBU interface analyzer (illustrated). The DSA-1 was capable not only of protocol analysis but also of electrical measurements of the bearer signal and this capability made it unique. This was not only the first product of its kind, but due to its hand-held format became the standard tool for broadcasters around the world building and commissioning large scale digital audio installations. Customers included most of the world’s leading broadcasters such as the BBC, UK independents such as Thames TV, Yorkshire TV & Channel 4, WDR and ALL of the German state broadcasting regions, TBS and NHK (Japan), Disney, NBC, CBS, ABC (US) and CCTV China.
Second generation: AD-2 and DA-2
Towards the end of the 1990’s Prism Sound launched the AD-2 and DA-2 converters, introducing the capability to record at sampling rates up to 96kHz. The DA-2 converter is a remarkable design and there have been none quite like it since.
The AD-2 and DA-2 have largely supplanted the earlier AD-1/124 and DA-1 converters in leading mastering facilities (such as Metropolis for example) though there is still a good second hand market among smaller facilities for the original products and many are still in use today. We’re very proud to say that the DA-2 remains the reference converter of choice for Peter Thomas, founder and owner of the Professional Monitor Company (PMC), makers of some of the world finest loudspeakers.
The AD-2 and DA-2 became the reference converters, whether recording acoustic music live to stereo, mastering or other applications. In this illustration, Grammy® Award-winning recording engineer and producer Elliot Scheiner is in the studio with Simon Osborne working on a surround sound mix for Sting.
Such was the performance of these (AD-2 & DA-2) beasts that several of them were sold into the shadowy world of intelligence gathering, where the lowest possible noise levels and greatest clarity were required!
The Sound of CD: Prism Sound investigates with SONY Music
This was a remarkable project and is rather unique in the history of digital audio. In summary, Prism Sound discovered that apparently identical discs could repeatably play back measureably different audio when played in the same player! Yikes, we thought – bring on the green pen!
During the 1990’s arguments began to surface about the sound quality of the new digital medium. Some of these arguments related to the production process for Compact Discs which involved the submission of a digital master tape (or later a CD-R) to a pressing plant, creation of stampers for the CD replication machines and the pressing of the discs themselves.
One such debate involved a number of high-profile artistes, including Pink Floyd and Mariah Carey, and SONY Music. The contention was that something was amiss in the production process leading to an unsatisfactory sound upon playback of the discs. Prism Sound partnered with SONY Music and Doug Carson Associates (DCA), a company that supplied machinery for creating the “glass masters” that were the physical master from which ultimately the stampers would be formed.
It transpired that it is possible, with certain types of CD player, to distinguish by measurement of the audio output, exactly which disc is being played from a selection known to contain bit-identical data. Further, it is also possible to identify if the same content is being played from a different track (position) on the disc. The discs must first be verified as identical to the extent that the digital output stream from the player must be 100% bit accurate.
This is important because it established the importance of quality playback electronics. The reason for the flaw in the guilty players was poorly designed electronics in the CD players. For the technically-minded, the DAC chip reference voltage (used to generate the DAC output voltage by multiplying with the binary sample value) was modulated by interference from the transport servo electronics. Each disc, although hosting identical data, is physically unique like a fingerprint and as a result of the servo interference it is possible to measure a difference between numerically identical discs playing back! Worse, this is not limited to CD players! Any kind of player could produce damaged audio output in a comparable manner, even if playing from a hard drive, USB stick or network stream! So wait a minute – it isn’t enough just to have a bit accurate data stream and a good clock? Correct – it is not enough!
There was also a thread to the project that involved a listening experiment. The results there were dissappointing in as much as no evidence was found that listeners agreed about differences between discs. However this is not altogether suprising because listeners were allowed to choose their own listening system setup and components. Very few (if any) might be subject to this particular effect and there were few if any duplicate listening setups. Further, our total sample was only about 50 listeners. It would be a fascinating project to continue this research. We funded it ourselves up to that point.
You can read more about this project here: The Prism Sound CD Investigation
What we learned from this landmark project has informed our design philosophy since then and it would be fair to say that the project has been an important factor in helping Prism Sound to produce unbeatable product designs that don’t just manage a good distortion measurement on the bench under test conditions but which work well in every aspect, whatever the environment.
There is a brief article at the Audio Times blog that describes our approach, based on an AES Paper by Prism Sound CTO Ian Dennis: Read the Audio Times blog here.
Prism Sound moves into tracking with ADA-8: 2000 to 2007
In 2001 Prism Sound introduced the ADA-8 modular A/D and D/A converter. This provided eight channels of conversion in each direction or up to 16 channels of either A/D or D/A. The ADA-8 marked a change from primary focus on stereo classical and acoustic music recording and CD mastering to a much wider audience of recording studio clients who demanded high-quality digital multitrack recording. Now, recordings could be captured in the multitrack studio and mastered all on Prism Sound premium A/D and D/A converters.
The unit was quickly successful with sales to the legendary Abbey Road Studios, Metropolis Studios, Air Studios and many others.
An early recording on ADA-8 was Sting’s amazing live album “All this time” recorded in Italy with a small invited audience.
The performance was recorded and filmed on September 11th 2001, the same day as the terrible events in New York city at the World Trade centre and across the United States. The band knew of the attacks when they went on stage but continued, dedicating the performance and album to those who lost their lives.
Another well known occasion during the naughties was the worldwide Live 8 event. A massive event spannning cities around the globe, with a huge event in London’s Hyde Park. Queen were due to play another gig a few days later, but the gig was delayed due to another terrorist attack, the London bombings of July 7th 2005.
Performers in London included Pink Floyd, Paul McCartney, The Who, Joss Stone, Razorlight while other cities enjoyed performances from Neil Young, Bryan Adams, Green Day, Snow Patrol, Muse, The Cure, Bon Jovi, Dave Matthews, Stevie Wonder, the Kaiser Chiefs and many others.
The Live 8 DVD set with stereo and surround mixes was produced at Metropolis Studios London, with ADA-8’s of course!
Prism Sound launch dScope Series III audio analyzer 2002
In 2002 Prism Sound introduced the dScope Series III analogue & digital audio analyzer. This provided two channels of signal generation and analysis in both analogue and digital domains.
The dScope Series III was a radical departure from traditional measurement methods, where a dedicated electronic instrument was used. The dScope Series III was the world’s first audio analyzer whose functionality was almost entirely implemented in software – the measurement equivalent of a digital audio workstation.
Early adopters were mainly from the professional audio world. Clients such as Allen & Heath deployed the unit in R&D and soon after extended into production. Allen & Heath has grown considerably since then and expanded its production into China, still using the dScope Series III system.
Another early application was for a USB dual microphone adaptor for use with the SONY® playstation – over 15 million units were produced, using only eight dScope units on the production lines!
Later the dScope penetrated the automotive market and that sector remains one of the largest up to the present day, with customers such as Harman-Becker, BOSE, Alpine and Bosch (Blaupunkt).
Today, dScope is in use around the world in R&D centres and factories where audio products are designed and manufactured, including the Prism Sound converters – of course!
Prism Sound at Parliament: 2000 to 2010
Also during the 1990’s and throught the 2000’s, Prism Sound was developing multi-track audio logging recorders, capable of recording indefinitely by creating a loop of recording files on the host computer and also capable of playback while recording was taking place.
These were sold to military, law enforcement and legislative customers such as the US Department of Justice, the UK Parliament’s House of Lords and House of Commons, the Parliament of South Africa in Capetown and the Greater London Assembly (GLA).
The systems installed at the UK and South African parliaments were for Hansard, the official report of parliamentary business and were integrated with transcription tools created by Prism Sound for use with word processors such as Microsoft Word.
Prism Sound addresses desktop audio. Orpheus is born: 2007
At the end of 2007, Orpheus was born. Orpheus embraced radical change, pointing the way for many later competitor products. Prism Sound saw the need for a high-performance interface for the home studio and desktop audio market as the industry continued to evolve, making use of powerful new computers that would soon take over the job of mixing and processing audio from consoles and recorders.
Orpheus proved an instant hit with music producers from all genres of music. Orpheus users include Deadmau5, Irish acoustic guitarist John Feeley, Underworld (famous for their soundtrack to the movie “Trainspotting”) and Mark Willsher the San Francisco-based film score editor known for his work on the Lord Of The Rings trilogy. Grammy® award-winning producer Frank Filipetti used Orpheus to record Carly Simon and a host of internationally acclaimed musicians (including Teese Gohl, Peter Calo, Rick Marotta, Larry Ciancia, David Saw and Ben Taylor) on a laptop at Carly Simon’s house in Martha’s Vineyard in 2009.
Prism Sound updates ADA-8 to ADA-8XR supporting 192kHz: 2007
OK here’s a shot from a favourite client. This is a private recording studio. You only get in by invitation! Truly an ADA-8XR tower of power! But this is only one rig – the studio currently has three systems like this!Lots of famous artists have recorded at this studio. The orchestral score from the Oscar-winning movie “Gravity” was recorded here. Razorlight recorded their second album here.
Some of the legendary Led Zeppelin special editions were transferred from their analogue original masters to digital in this studio.
That’s the owner with the red Fender Strat – Mark Knopfler, formerly of Dire Straits with two more ADA-8XR’s in the background. Asked why he bought Prism Sound ADA-8XR he said:
“..because they’re better.”
The location is British Grove Studios, in Chiswick, West London.
ADA-8XR users include institutions responsible for archiving audio content at the highest quality: Institutions such as the US Library of Congress and The British Library, The Australian National Archives. Other institutions include the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, UK.
Sono Luminus is a company based in Virginia, USA that was founded in 1995 by Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, former founders of networking giant Cisco Systems. Sono Luminus has recorded medieval, glass, acoustic and modern instruments in solo and large orchestral performances. In addition, the Sono Luminus team has recorded solo vocalists, chant, antiphonal and traditional chorale ensembles. The company claims it is at the cutting edge of recording technology. It acquired Prism Sound ADA-8 converters in 2003 to record the world premier of Sir John Tavener’s Veil Of The Temple and upgraded to ADA-8XR later to facilitate recording at 192K sampling. The company also now owns classical label Dorian Recordings (www.dorian.com).
Other users included Studios Davout in France and Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones’ private studio in London, Trevor Horn/Sarm Studios and RAK Studios.
It’s impossible to list every major artist or album that has used Prism Sound conversion. It’s a big number, a big proportion of mainstream recorded music. And the use of Prism Sound converters and interfaces is not limited just to music projects. Film scoring has always been an important part of the market and many major film scores have been scored on Prism Sound ADA-8 family converters. When a major studio equips itself with a new recording setup, literally hundreds of artists will use it. Prism Sound has equipped the worlds leading studios. Here are just a few artist and project names from the 2000’s .. not necessarily the biggest or in any particular order .. Scoring for Harry Potter movies; Live 8 DVD set; Courtney Pine (saxophonist); Jools Holland; Sting; Robbie Williams; Casino Royale 2006 remake (James Bond); George Massenburg (producer – many projects ); José Gonzáles; Headhunter (computer game for SEGA); Luiza Borac’s recording of George Enescu’s published piano music ( issued as a hybrid SACD and received worldwide critical acclaim); The Arctic Monkeys; Petula Clark; The Lord of The Rings movie trilogy; The Aviator; King Kong; Chamber music recordings from the late Beethoven Quartets for CD with the Cypress String Quartet; Dave Grohl; Tomb Raider (movie); Panic Room(movie); The English Patient (movie); The Talented Mr. Ripley (movie); Amadeus (movie); The Oscar winning Monster’s Ball with Halle Berry and scoring for some Star Wars episodes.
More recently Prism Sound provided a stack of ADA-8XR converters for the refurbishment of the legendary Wisseloord Studios in the Netherlands and then later still probably the biggest installation to date, a mighty facility in the middle east .. which we can’t even talk about yet!
Prism Sound acquires SADiE and moves house: 2008
On April fools day in 2008, Prism Sound made its first acquisition and in July of the same year moved into the former SADiE building in Stretham, Cambridgeshire, UK, now the Prism Sound HQ. SADiE was one of the very first audio workstations and has its roots in the early 1990’s. SADiE was the world’s first non-destructive computer based audio editor, working on an “Edit Decision List” that indexed the audio files rather than modifying them. This made it easy to re-do an edit from the start of a session without having to “undo” all the subsequent steps.
But there was an even more important reason that the top producers and engineers preferred SADiE: Guaranteed bit-transparency. Incredibly, many software audio workstations were unable to play back a bit-for-bit copy of what had been recorded! The marriage was a very successful one and SADIE continues as a leading professional audio workstation to this day. SADiE is the preferred choice for craft editing at BBC radio and other major broadcasters.
The software has a unique user interface that is quite distinct and its advocates argue that SADiE’s workflow is second to none.
It was for that reason that BBC Radio asked Prism Sound to develop a new version of SADiE in the 2008-2011 period that would run as a software application on BBC computer desktops without the DSP hardware that had previously been a feature of SADiE. At the BBC, SADiE integrated with the VCS “Dira!” production and playout automation system for it’s national Radio networks – BBC Radio 1, 2, 3, 4 & 5. Many independent programme makers supplying the BBC also use SADiE.
But SADIE is not limited to broadcast programme making: it was the editor of choice at Metropolis Mastering when they opened in the early 1990s, freshly equipped with Prism Sound A/D and D/A converters. It was also the tool of choice for Abbey Road mastering – the Beatles “Anthology” albums were mastered there using SADiE software and Prism Sound outboard equipment.
SADiE continues to dominate the mastering market with converts such as Universal Mastering, Hollywood (pictured) equipping no fewer than seven rooms in 2014. SADiE was the tool of choice for the legendary Doug Sax. His protege Eric Boulanger continues to use SADiE today at “The Bakery” mastering on SONY Pictures lot in Los Angeles.
The Wall live from Athens 2011
James Guthrie, known for his front of house mixing for the original Pink Floyd tour of “The Wall” in the 1980’s, continues to work with Pink Floyd and Roger Waters and others from his wonderful private studio. James uses SADiE software coupled with ADA-8XR converters for his production work.
In 2011 James enlisted the help of Prism Sound and SADiE to record Roger Waters solo production of “The Wall” at a series of live events in Athens. Six performances were recorded, some without an audience to enable close up filming from in front of the stage. Pictured is the inside of the mobile truck “Le Voyageur” used for the recording with the ADA-8XR and SADiE racks visible in the equipment bay at the back (where the tape machine would have been in years past!).
A total of 96 channels were recorded. Duplicated SADiE H64 recorders were used running at 96kHz with RAID mirrored hard disks, all fed from two banks of ADA-8XR converters. The recordings contributed to the Sean Evans production released in 2015 on DVD and Blu-Ray.
Prism Sound and Imerge home cinema: 2010
Prism Sound made its second acquisition in 2010. The Imerge home entertainment business was for sale and it was felt that it presented an opportunity to enter the home entertainment market. The MS1-HD was a highly innovative home media server designed for networked operation with several client units each showing their own choice of movie in high definition and/or playing out audio to several zones.
Under Prism Sound ownership, the Imerge team continued development of the media server with the MS1-3D, capable of seving up to 15 High-definition 3D movies at the same time plus numerous high quality audio streams!
Prism Sound also developed the Imerge S4000 audio server and continues to provide Imerge S4000 sound servers to mainly commercial installations around the world.
Prism Sound 2013 to the present: Lyra, Titan and Atlas USB interfaces for musicians & producers
Prism Sound: Headline sponsors of MPG Awards
In 2008 Prism Sound teamed up with the Music Producers Guild as principal sponsors of the MPG Awards for music production. The event has now run for eight years and is recognised as a major event in the UK music industry calendar, with the prestigious “Producer of the Year” award being jointly awarded with the Brit Awards and the winner going forward to collect his award there. A highlight of the 2016 awards was an appearance by Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin who congratulated John Davis on his award for Mastering Engineer of the Year.
Read more about the MPG Awards here.
Prism Sound 2016: Callia – Not just a DAC, but digital preamplifier and headphone amplifier too!
Callia – the culmination of years of experience with technology, customers & product design. Now you can listen to music the way that it really should sound – just the way it was in the studio!
In the words of Gus Dudgeon, Elton John’s producer, talking about Prism Sound and SADiE technology: “Recordings can be heard much closer to the reproduction we had originally intended”.
What more can we say!
Prism Sound 2019: Test & Measurement division launches the super-competitive dScope M1 Audio Analyzer!
The Test and Measurement division of Prism Sound launches a fantastic new and super-competitive Audio Analyzer solution: dScope Series III with the new M1 measurement interface family. After several years of painstaking development, the M1 measurement interface family finally arrives. Just as when the original dScope Series III launched in 2002, the new dScope M1 family will change the way audio engineers think about their test & measurement tools. With virtually all the signal processing migrated into software in the host computer the M1 family sets a new standard for compactness and competitiveness of professional audio measurement equipment.
In the words of an early M1 customer:
“I’m smiling!!”.
Find out why she’s so happy – Visit: dScope M1 Audio Analyzer or see the pricing in our configurator tool: M1 configurator page
Prism Sound Test & Measurement Flies Solo as the Music & SADiE division joins the Audio Squadron!
Cambridge, UK: August 12th 2019: Prism Media Products Limited has re-launched itself specializing exclusively in audio test & measurement solutions. The former Test & Measurement division of Prism Sound remains the sole business of Prism Media Products Limited but now trading under the new name of Spectral Measurement. The move follows the recent announcement that Prism Sound’s Music and Post Production division, which incorporates SADiE, has joined forces with the US-based Tracktion Software Corporation and is now operating under the umbrella of Audio Squadron.
Graham Boswell, Prism Sound founder and managing director of Spectral Measurement, says: “We are very excited by the opportunities this new structure provides and see it as a strong and positive move for customers who will benefit from increased focus in each of the new businesses. This will enable faster and more customer centric product development and enhance our ability to deliver the professional audio tools our customers have come to rely on.”
Technical Director and co-shareholder Ian Dennis says: “These are exciting times, with the refocussing of Prism Sound’s innovative audio test division into Spectral Measurement coinciding with the launch of the new dScope M range, which will once again redefine the bangs-per-buck proposition in the audio test and measurement market.”
2019: Collaboration with Hill Acoustics
To strenghten the offering in the electroacoustics measurement scape, Spectral Measurement becomes the worldwide distributor for the Test Chambers by Hill Acoustics. The Tetrahedral Test Chambers are designed to enable easy and affordable electroacoustic measurements with staggering measurement repeatablility, accuracy and correlation across labs, production lines, and across the world.
The same design principles are used in the Polar Test Chamber and Microphone Test Chamber solutions, which allow measuring electroacoustic devices from full loudspeaker systems to microphones and hydrophones – all with an uncertainty of less than +/- 0.25dB! The TTC chamber solutions meet the international standards and are also accepted by the industry with customers in some of the largest technology companies around the world.