"The motivation for this project is to establish traceability to national standards for the key performance parameters for the Keysight audio source and analyser.

The challenge is to provide traceability for the three relevant parameters: absolute amplitude accuracy; amplitude flatness over the audio frequency range; and the fidelity of the measurement requirements, reflected in the dynamic range and accuracy. The accuracy needed to differentiate between products in this market is generally less than 1%. Due to the very low levels of distortion present in an audio source it is inherently difficult to establish a fully traceable measure of the total harmonic distortion.

This project focuses on a providing a traceable series of assessments that would increase confidence of new customers in the absolute performance of these instruments, when calibrated against the UK's primary standards. This would represent a step change in the way in which these products can be tested as well as establishing a step change in the level of accuracy. This coupled with the independently verifiable, and traceable, levels of THD would enable increased confidence in this product range and would therefore lead to more sales.