Abstract: A direct field acoustic testing system includes at least one control microphone, a controller operatively coupled to the control microphone such that the controller receives at least one input signal from the control microphone, and at least four acoustic transducer groups operatively coupled to the controller such that each transducer is separately controllable by the controller such that a separate output signal is received by each transducer from the controller. A setup signal is applied to each of the acoustical transducers. The acoustic output of each of the acoustical transducers is monitored using the at least one control microphone. Assumptions regarding the relationship between the acoustic fields measured by the control microphones are made to enable the controller to reduce the number of calculations needed to compute error functions and corrected drive signals to be applied to the acoustic transducer groups.