To achieve a higher Signal-Noise Ratio (SNR) in your acoustical measurements, FuzzMeasure can calculate synchronous averages of the recorded log sweep signal.
FuzzMeasure calculates the synchronous averages by capturing the log sweep stimulus multiple times, and averaging the resulting impulse responses on each record channel.
As you change the number of averages, FuzzMeasure will immediately inform you of the SNR improvement that you can expect. Each doubling of averages will gain you approximately 3dB of SNR. So, 2 averages buys you a 3dB improvement, 4 buys you 6dB, and so on.
You should experiment with the averaging option if you are capturing acoustical measurements in a noisy environment. Averaging is not at all useful if you’re performing loopback or electrical measurements with FuzzMeasure, and should be avoided in these cases.
Setting the averaging value arbitrarily high will not always guarantee that increase in SNR, as the law of diminishing returns applies here. To see this in action, run a few measurements at a lower volume, increasing averages with each step. This effect is seen most clearly in the log sweep impulse response and energy decay curve views.
In general, averaging up to 8 times will suffice if you’re having trouble with a high noise floor in a single measurement. Consider increasing the log sweep’s duration before creating too many synchronous averages, as it may provide a higher payoff.