DXOMARK Wind noise attenuation

DXOMARK’s Wind Noise Lab is a hardware and software solution that employs a documented and rigorous methodology for evaluating the impact of wind on audio quality and for assessing the effectiveness of wind noise processing during audio recordings. In addition to the hardware setup and controlling software, DXOMARK provides documentation and training on how to judge the quality of a device’s wind noise mitigation.

The hardware test kit includes:

• Four monitoring speakers for playing all kinds of audio content from different source positions;
• A wind generator that can be set to a wide range of wind speeds, from light breeze to gale (1.5 m/s to >16 m/s) at test position;
• A 360° rotating smartphone holder to allow testing at any angle of wind incidence.

The controlling software allows you to manipulate each part of the setup independently, as well to automatize recording sequences with custom audio content, wind speeds, and smartphone angles.  DXOMARK wind noise test tracks are part of the package, these include voice male and female voice content, urban background and correlated pink noise.

To perceptually assess the effectiveness of wind noise processing, the device under test records voice content under conditions of no wind, light wind, moderate wind, and strong wind at both 0° and 90° angles. Our engineers apply a grade from 0 to 5 to each recording, based on speech intelligibility when compared to the reference (no wind) recording.

In addition to perceptual evaluation, you can perform objective tests using equipment and protocols that are common in the audio industry to further characterize wind noise reduction performance based on such metrics as wind reduction ratio, wind spectral energy, and signal average correlation vs reference signal. DXOMARK will provide you with all the information you need to perform these tests according to our protocol.