WT3 Conclusion
Odds & Ends
The Dayton Audio’s WT3 is product designed to measure impedance only. It will not make dB spl measurements of the driver/system under test. For that you’ll need to rely on some other measurement software/system. You’ll also need to look elsewhere to model system simulations based on the raw data/T/S parameters generated by WT3. Fortunately, the WT3 application includes an export utility that makes it easy to do all your post-processing/simulation work outside the program. (There’s an import utility as well). For the job it is designed to do, the WT3 does very well indeed.
The few quirks found in the review sample mainly relate to the user interface. For example, the Ctrl-V (Paste) keystroke sequence wouldn’t paste text data into text boxes ordinarily used for data entry. Also, the text box used in the Impedance Calibration screen is masked in such a way that you can’t enter a value such as “.9967”; rather it needs to see “0.9967”.
Additionally, there is no mouse (or other) cursor function
attached to the measurement plots; you can’t use a cursor to scroll across the
plots to look at individual datapoint values. To view individual datapoint
values, you’d need to export the raw data as a text file and read the
information from the resultant file.
The WT3 allows you to save up to 20 impedance plots in memory, though it provides no direct way to name them. This isn’t an issue if you’re working with only 2 plots. But if you’re working with 20 plots, how long before you forget just exactly what plot # 7 is? (WT3 does allow collections of saved impedance plots to be saved as a Project file). To be fair, it should be mentioned you can save 3 tabbed pages worth of text data per driver measured (the Workbench Measured parameters are filled in automatically as measurements are taken), using the handy Driver Editor utility, shown at right.
Conclusion
Dayton Audio’s WT3 Woofer Tester is a budget-priced measurement tool for working up impedance plots of raw drivers and various electrical components, such as resistors, caps and inductors. It can also provide the all-important Thiele/Small parameters, essential to the loudspeaker design process.
The product is easy to install and easy to use. Though purposely limited in its capabilities, what it does do it does very well, in a number of important ways comparing favorably to a system costing better than 10 times as much. Not bad!
Dayton Audio WT3 Woofer
Tester
MSRP: $99.88US/unit
http://www.daytonaudio.com
The Score Card
The scoring below is based on each piece of equipment doing the duty it is designed for. The numbers are weighed heavily with respect to the individual cost of each unit, thus giving a rating roughly equal to:
Performance × Price Factor/Value = Rating
Audioholics.com note: The ratings indicated below are based on subjective listening and objective testing of the product in question. The rating scale is based on performance/value ratio. If you notice better performing products in future reviews that have lower numbers in certain areas, be aware that the value factor is most likely the culprit. Other Audioholics reviewers may rate products solely based on performance, and each reviewer has his/her own system for ratings.
Audioholics Rating Scale
— Excellent
- — Very Good
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- — Fair
- — Poor
| Metric | Rating |
|---|---|
| Build Quality | |
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All of the volume levels for both audio out and record in should be at the max and the balance be set to the middle. If your settings are not these you will possibly see anomalies (i.e. strange spikes or dips, jagged plots, etc...) in the plot graphs.
Also in Vista on some systems the USB ports can be individually adjusted, so if you set it up on one port for testing and then the next day use a different port you may see anomalies in the measurements.
And as stated in the article there is a 90 second stabilization time for the unit, it is necessary to wait otherwise there will be anomalies in the test graphs.
And if you have it set up properly and calibrated and are getting strange graphs there could be two other causes:
1) Other noise in the testing area (i.e. kids, dogs barking, etc...) these things will affect the plot (testing should be done in a semi-quite room.
2) The .ini file became corrupted, just delete it and restart the WT3
Hope this helps.
