Sound Testing with Eggplant Solutions
Many users of Eggplant's testing tools are interested in sound testing as part of their overall automated or manual testing requirements. The Eggplant suite of tools lets you integrate sound quality analysis or sound streaming software into the Eggplant environment to facilitate sound testing of systems under test (SUTs).
Manual Sound Testing of Remote Systems
For testers using Eggplant solutions such as Eggplant Manual, Eggplant Automation Cloud, and Eggbox for manual testing, the test devices or systems are generally located remotely or in a confined location where it isn't possible for the tester to listen directly to the audio produced by system speakers. One way to get around this problem is to use a third-party streaming application.
Nicecast (Rogue Amoeba Software) is an application available for Mac that you can use to broadcast streaming audio from a connected SUT. You tether the SUT via an audio cable to the Mac (or Eggbox) where Nicecast is running. Nicecast then provides the mechanism for remote users to access the audio broadcast from the SUT over the network.
Network configuration with Nicecast running on an Eggbox for audio testing
Automated or Manual Sound Quality Testing
Whether a SUT is physically accessible or not, testers are often interested in testing sound produced by an application or SUT. In automated testing, Eggplant Functional (EPF) can be used to control sound quality software from companies such as Prism Sound, MathWorks, or RightMark Audio Analyzer (RMAA), just as it can control any application under test. A single Eggplant Functional script can trigger a sound on a SUT, then connect to a system running the sound testing software to visually validate sound quality or other characteristics in an automated fashion.
The SUT that produces the audio can be connected either directly to the system running the sound testing software or to an intermediate piece of audio capture hardware, such as Prism Sound or M-Audio products, as shown in the following diagram:
Network configuration for audio sound quality testing