High-Speed Sample Rates (for Ultrasound)

Because of the ASA Project on making an Ultrasound Dosimeter (see their thread here), I decided to explore what high-speed sample rates the Tympan can support.

You can, of course, ask the Tympan (RevE) for any sample rate that you want; the device will function and samples of audio data will appear. The question is whether the resulting audio data is still any good at very high sample rates.

I wrote up my testing in this blog post: Open Audio: Tympan at High Speed (Ultrasonic!) Sample Rates

RecordingSetup

My conclusion is that the Tympan is good to a sample rate of 96 kHz (maybe even 110 kHz). But, at 115 kHz and above, the signal is too corrupted to be usable.

96kHz

115kHz

96 kHz is still good for all sorts of fun ultrasonic explorations. So, let’s all go forth and have fun!

  • Make a distance sensor!
  • Listen to bats and rats!
  • Listen for water leaks in pipes!
  • Listen to ice crack!
  • Make an ultrasonic acoustic modem!
  • Listen to your plants…do they make any noise in the ultrasound?

Fun!

Chip