Inspired by the spirit of REW (Room EQ Wizard) and similar audio-measurement software. Independently designed and implemented.
First and foremost, to Nick Sukhov - building his power-amplifier and phono-preamp designs, and wanting to measure them properly, is where this whole project began. Phonalyser.web exists because of that spark.
A renowned audio engineer. In 1988-89 he designed the celebrated high-fidelity power amplifier known as the ВВ (vysokaya vernost - "high fidelity") and a phono preamplifier that already implemented the IEC amendment in 1989. He went on to develop the dynamic-biasing system for cassette decks at the Kyiv company Mayak, and served as editor-in-chief of Radio-Hobby magazine. He is still designing today: his latest high-fidelity power amplifier reaches one of the lowest distortion figures ever published - around 0.00008 % THD at 100 W. Measuring a distortion that low - below what typical analysers and soundcards resolve - is exactly the challenge Phonalyser.web was built to meet.
To Hans Rosenberg, whose video on the noise floor and a tone's fundamental skirt was the nudge that turned a long-running frustration with existing tools into the decision to build a dedicated one. Phonalyser.web tackles the skirt live, in the running spectrum, rather than as an offline post-processing step.
A measurement is only as clean as the converters in front of the software. Phonalyser.web was developed and validated against reference hardware from these builders: