The measurement of the impulse response of microphones is crucial to understand their temporal properties. Little information is disclosed by manufacturers, claiming this is hard to measure due to the requirement of specific hardware and the risk of non-linear response of the microphone. Both objections could be circumvented by using Gaussian distributed white noise as exciting signal and the cross correlation technique. As the use of a loudspeaker is required, a major stumbling block is the requirement of deconvolution of the obtained impulse response. This study shows that the deconvolution is feasible in case of a measured impulse response of a loudspeaker and the impulse response of a modelled (and thus well known) microphone, even if the impulse response of the loudspeaker is significantly wider than the impulse response of the microphone.
The second part of the feasibility study includes a Monte Carlo simulation of the actual measurement procedure, including the exciting Gaussian distributed white noise signal. The exciting signal has been verified to fulfill the requirements for this application. The main conclusion is that the technique is feasible for the determination of the microphone impulse response, but the results show some slight imperfections, which can be reduced by using the same noise signal for the determination of the impulse response of the loudspeaker.
The major conclusion of both parts is that the measurement of the microphone impulse response using noise is feasible without special hardware and that there is no reason for manufacturers to keep this information away from users.
