WT3 Woofer Tester - Bad Experience

[radiogram]

I have had such bad luck with the WT3 Woofer tester. My first one was defective and parts Xpress sent me a replacement. Again the replacement does not work properly. When I short the leads and do Test Lead Caliberation it says resistance is greater than 1 Ohm!!! just like the first unit did. When I measure a known 8 Ohm resistor it comes up with Re=40 Ohms!!! On Bob Crites Woofer it measures Re as 1 Ohm (BEC Woofer Re is around 3.6 Ohms).

I am so disappointed with the WT3 and I do not know even if I get another replacement I will trust it.

Lee - Have any of you used it with Windows 7? Or anyone used WT3 with W7 with good results?

Thanks

[Al Klappenberger]

I had the exact same thing happen to me! Lee Clinton bought one and found you had to wait several minutes before it would work. He sent it to me to try. I loaded the software on two different computers and both acted exactly as you describe! I could not do the test lead short zero calibration!

Thumbs DOWN on the WT3 woofer tester! [N]

Al k.

[Rudy81]

Wow, I must have lucked out. I purchased one a few months ago and it worked just fine out of the box. Sorry to hear about your problem.

[BEC]

I really wanted the Woofer Tester to work. Seems like a brilliant time saving idea. But, I have had two of them and both are junk. The first one I had calibrated all right and I went right into testing some drivers. After collecting data for a few hours on several drivers, I took a long look at the data and realized that some of it did not look right. So, I tried to verify a couple of the sets of data the old fashioned way. Decided the thing was junk.

So, the WT-3 came out and I decided to give it another try. I actually liked it better than the first one because the WT-3 never even made it through calibration. At least that one did not waste a lot of my time before I could declare it to be junk.

Bob Crites

[radiogram]

Ok. It WORKS NOW!!!! Turns out the WT3 contradictory to claim of Windows 7 Support, is not working under Windows 7. I borrowed an Old XP Laptop and when I tried it on that it seems to work well!!! It caliberated well including test leads and I did some sanity tests with known resistors and inductors and it measures pretty close with good consistency across many sets of runs. I will be making a separate post with measurements on my drivers.

[pzannucci]

Petty much what I was thinking. USB is supposed to be Universal but it isn't always and the software surely isn't (especially operating system).

Mine works great on XP. Now I know I need to keep my old laptop for at least one thing.

[Rudy81]

I used mine on Windows 7 64 bit and it worked just fine.

[Al Klappenberger]

Both machines I tried it on were XP. It would not work on either.

An inconsistent product is still thumbs down in my book.

Al K.

[Rudy81]

Al, I agree with you, but when it comes to computers and software drivers it is always a pain in the neck. I have been messing with coputers (DOS and windows based) for a long time. Drivers are a constant issue with all hardware due to the constantly changing nature of the operating system and the myriad of hardware in our machines.....just the nature of the beast.

[Al Klappenberger]

Rudy,

I like that! It's another pie in the face for Bill Gates!

Al K.

[Arkytype]

Gram,

I contacted Parts Express and they shipped me a replacement WT3 even before I returned the original!

Unfortunately, the replacement unit fails the initial lead calibration. However, if you go ahead and click on "Measure Free-Air Parameters" (with a driver attached to the test leads), disconnect the driver and then perform the "Test Leads Calibration" and then the "Impedance Calibration" the WT3 seems to behave itself.

In the FAQ section of the manual, it says a 90 second warmup period is required for everything to stabilize. It also cautions against connecting the test leads to a loudspeaker connected to an amplifier as the DC balance of the WT3 will be affected.

The WT3 software can be downloaded so you can see the actual measurements. http://www.parts-express.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?Partnumber=390-804 Just click on the ineractive tour.

Now that WT3 is on sale for $79.00, I heartily recommend it warts and all. The time saving alone making precise, repeatable measurements is worth it. I'll contact PE to see what is causing the initial cals to fail.

Lee

[radiogram]

Lee:

What OS are you running? While it works like a charm on XP, I cannot get it to work on W7 (and yes I followed all the procedures religiously).

[Arkytype]

Gram,

I'm running Windows XP-Pro on three different computers.

I just got off the phone with Parts Express tech support. The Windows 7 incompatibility is a known issue and they are working on it.

They suggest that once you have WT3 up and running and the USB test lead has been connected for at least a couple of minutes, check the Sounds and Audio Devices Properties to insure that USB Audio CODEC is the default device. Under Advanced settings, check that 16-bit, 44 kHz is selected.

Since my last post I've had my replacement WT3 fail initial lead calibration only once out of seven times on a laptop and no failures after 6 reboots on a desktop both running XP-Pro. With the one failure, I performed a Measure Free-Air Parameters test, and then did the lead short/impedance cal and the WT3 worked fine.

If you are planning to measure several drivers and their parameters or need accurate resistance and inductance measurements (well within 1% accuracy) and want to avoid the tedium of point-by-point plotting, then I'll conditionally recommend WT3.

Lee

[Rudy81]

I know it worked on Windows 7, 64 bit when I got it a few months ago. Unfortunately, my laptop had to be switched out due to a bad motherboard so I no longer have that installed on my hard drive. I do recall I downloaded the latest software version and I'm pretty sure I ran it under Administrative privileges.

Don't know if I had WinXP emmulation running or not. In any event, it seemed to work well for me during calibration and the readings I took on my DBB woofers. Of course....I hardly know what I am doing, so who knows if I had bogus information.