MindsMirror
1000+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- May 9, 2014
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I have done some measurements to find the output impedance of my Sound Blaster Z sound card, mostly just for curiosity and fun. Here is what I did:
Create a 100Hz sin wave file in matlab and play it on repeat in foobar.
Attach a multimeter measuring AC voltage to the left channel output with no load (ie. measuring open circuit voltage).
Set the volume such that the AC open circuit voltage is 1V.
Attach a 33Ohm resistor load to the left channel and measure AC voltage drop across the resistor.
And here is the result I got:
Headphone output: 0.545V
LR channel line out: 0.648V
Logitech Z-2300 sub-woofer's headphone output: 0.472V.
That means the output impedance is about 28 Ohms for the headphone output, 18 Ohms for the line out, and 36 Ohms for my sub-woofer.
I also measured that the maximum open circuit voltage was 3.33V and 2.2V for the headphone and line out respectively.
I think it's interesting that the headphone amp has higher impedance than the line out.
Create a 100Hz sin wave file in matlab and play it on repeat in foobar.
Attach a multimeter measuring AC voltage to the left channel output with no load (ie. measuring open circuit voltage).
Set the volume such that the AC open circuit voltage is 1V.
Attach a 33Ohm resistor load to the left channel and measure AC voltage drop across the resistor.
And here is the result I got:
Headphone output: 0.545V
LR channel line out: 0.648V
Logitech Z-2300 sub-woofer's headphone output: 0.472V.
That means the output impedance is about 28 Ohms for the headphone output, 18 Ohms for the line out, and 36 Ohms for my sub-woofer.
I also measured that the maximum open circuit voltage was 3.33V and 2.2V for the headphone and line out respectively.
I think it's interesting that the headphone amp has higher impedance than the line out.