Test Bench of the Year Competition
| Every engineer should be proud of his test bench. Whether it's stacked to the ceiling with every piece of gear ever made, perfectly squared away or looks like a cyclone hit it (but it works!), your bench says something about who you are and how you operate. Test Bench of the Year Competition Categories
AND THE WINNER IS: Noe has a great setup with numerous pieces of AP gear, and a great pose. |
 |
Best Equipped Bench
The Winner:
Noe Rubio, Televisa San Angel, Mexico
We have 16 TV Studios and test all the equipment with all our audio precision equipments!!
Runners up:
John Siau, Benchmark Media Systems, Inc. , USA
This is one of three Audio Precision test stations at Benchmark Media Systems, Inc. This unit is positioned at the end of the DAC1 production line. All products produced by Benchmark undergo a full suite of tests and alignment procedures. The AP test stations provide thorough and efficient testing of 100% of the products produced by Benchmark. Benchmark products carry a five year warrantee and are shipped worldwide. It is essential that all product defects are detected prior to shipping; the AP systems are an important part of this process.
Peter, an undisclosed test bench somewhere in North America
We own 6 Audio Precision instruments of various generations (from system one to ap2700 series). Four AP2722 serve us for the production. Most our products contain several audio inputs and outputs, some until 128 stereo canals. Useless to mention that certain set-up resemble spaghettis. Fortunately, we can count on your instruments to integrate the generation and the analysis of audio. They help us to keep our tests effective, precise and the “most simple” as possible.
Most cables
This section had a lot of entries, and it was often hard to determine if they belonged in this category or in "Best Equipped"
The Winner:
Etienne Lémery,
Ing ENSEA, Journaliste Prof., France
I'm testing a lot of power amps just now so I had no time to arrange all these boxes... (they are peripherals to generate music like signals, VCA, time base etc and in use... As you can see I have a lot of vintage products and as you can't see the ceiliing, I have also monitoring loudspeakers... It's definitely an audio lab !
Runners up:
Gary Searl, Pro-Bel, UK
Matthew Bean, Carlsbro Electronics, UK
This is my beloved test bench, please note the lack of coffee cups, but the pint can of red bull copy, also Roland the monitor rat and my trustworth old system one still in daily use after all these years.
Proudest owner / biggest grin on an engineer
The Winner: Brian Curtis at DTS
Runners Up:
Kendall Castor-Perry, at the time with Texas Instruments
I make no claims for the bestness of the bench setup here, in fact that day it was rather scruffy – many cables, but no coffee (you shouldn't drink caffeine when listening to audio equipment, it messes with your hearing). I had got something to work, hence the smile.
Other notables
Most in need of coffee...
Karl Heinrich Hofmann, University of Applied Sciences,
Germany
Since 2003 our IT-Lab is proud owner of an AP SYS-2522. We mainly use it for educational purposes but also in some research projects. Students working on their Diploma-Thesis quite often work far into the night in the lab.
They try to combat their fatigue with many bottles of energy drinks as can be seen on the photo. The AP SYS-2522 is the heart of our audio test bench.
Most Spartan...
Young Yang, Inventec Corporation, China
Ummm?...
