Welcome to additional information accompanying Ding Dong – the Sounds of Time, Vanity Fair's On Time May 2009 article on Minute Repeater watches by Meridian's Bob Stuart.
Click here to read the On Time article (PDF, 2MB). You can also download an extended version, The Sound of Minute Repeaters (PDF, 2.75MB)
For more about Meridian and the range of high-quality luxury entertainment systems we manufacture in our factory near Cambridge in England, please visit the official Meridian Website.
For each Minute Repeater we examined, you can view a "waterfall" plot, a waveform and an audio spectrum chart showing the complex sounds of the chimes, along with audio files that will enable you to hear the chimes for yourself. Do you agree with our distinguished panel?
Each watch was recorded, both on a table and on the wrist, in an anechoic chamber (below left) – a special room where there are no echoes and you only hear the sound source itself – with a special instrumentation microphone (below right). The chimes were recorded on a computer with a powerful digital recording system (above).
Recording
in the anechoic chamber.
Left: The chamber setup itself.
Right: The microphone in position over the Vacheron Constantin.
In the sections below you can examine the test results for the watches and listen to their chimes.
To view a large version of each of the plots, simply click on the image. To return to this page, just click the "Back" button in your browser.
In the same way, you can listen to the chimes by clicking on the links. For each watch, there are two recordings: one made with the watch on a wrist and the other with it on a table (where it is generally louder, but the sound may be coloured by the surface). Each recording is available in two forms: Apple Lossless (highest quality) and mp3 (most widely playable). You can download the sounds by right-clicking on the link and choosing "save link as" and then, if you import them into iTunes, you can transfer them to an iPod.
1. Audemars
Piguet
2. Bulgari
3. Corum
4. Franck Müller
5. IWC
6. Jaeger-LeCoultre
7. Piaget
8. Vacheron Constantin
