The measurements match the ears
We measure TENSA regularly — with instruments. THD+N curves, channel crosstalk, noise floor — a lot goes into the full picture. This post shows three graphs.
On all graphs: Blue — Pioneer, Red — Allen & Heath Xone 92, Green — TENSA.
Graph 1: noise floor
Pioneer shows the lowest noise — it is a digital mixer, so this is expected with no signal present. TENSA and Allen & Heath sit at roughly the same level. On the red trace, there is a small staircase at 50, 100 and 200 Hz — mains harmonics and interference. The reason is the switching power supply inside the Xone 92, which is an odd choice for a mixer of this class. Nothing critical: all of this is below the threshold of hearing, inaudible in practice, only visible on the graph.
Graph 2: line input — harmonics and noise
1 kHz Allen & Heath shows unexpected harmonics here — likely the level was dialled in slightly higher during the test, possibly causing a small overload on a more sensitive input. Interestingly, this harmonic does not appear on the phono graph. More importantly: once a real signal is present, TENSA shows the lowest noise floor of the three — and we have not even focused on optimising this section yet.
Graph 3: phono stage — harmonics and noise, 1 kHz
The most interesting graph. Allen & Heath shows a noticeable hump and a large harmonic comb — a whole spectrum of harmonics alongside mains noise. TENSA's first harmonic is slightly higher than Xone 92's — that is the nature of tubes. The second harmonic is unavoidable in a tube circuit. Pioneer has none at all — digital. But across the rest of the spectrum, TENSA's noise floor is lower than both competitors. Very solid results — the best of the three, we would say.
The tube harmonic is a normal characteristic. It sits below the threshold of hearing. We still want to reduce it further — to make the graphs even cleaner. That happens in the production version.
The prototype already sounds excellent: lively, transparent, on par with phono preamps costing several thousand euros. It is also comfortable to work with and beautiful. The production version will be better — we know exactly where the headroom is.
As far as we know, no other craft company making DJ mixers publishes measurement graphs. We do. We have nothing to hide — and we would be curious to see what others would show.