Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Part 1
E
very now and then I receive in- we have been led to be-
quiries from amateur loud- lieve, and second, that
speaker builders who seek reli- the effects of pipe
able guidelines for transmission- geometry (not just
line design. Although any kind of wave- length) are both unex-
guide can legitimately be called a trans- pected and important.
mission line, most experimenters are in- The familiar symbols
terested in loudspeakers coupled to I use (Table 1) are most-
damped, nonresonant pipes. If every- ly the same as those
thing works out just right, such a system used for vented-box
can be dramatically neutral in quality in analysis. I have added fP
contrast to a comparable vented box or as a shortcut label based
even a stuffed closed box. on the physical length FIGURE 1: Basic
About a year ago I began to compile a of the air path, such as test setup.
brief transmission-line bibliography. But a 100Hz pipe. The
after going through my own library and pipes actual fundamen-
checking various technical journals, it tal resonance f0 is affected by a number nearfield microphone placement. This
became apparent that most existing liter- of additional factors, including end cor- technique1 allows you to measure loud-
ature consists of strongly voiced opin- rection, pipe geometry, and stuffing ma- speaker and pipe outputs separately, but
ions. Actual test results are rare and often terial. there is a certain amount of crosstalk.
contradictory. Most of the unwanted sound travels di-
TEST METHODS rectly through air, some comes from scat-
TESTING PIPES The simplest transmission line is a tered room reflections, and some is trans-
So I decided to build and test a few straight pipe with a loudspeaker on one mitted as vibrations in the pipe walls.
damped pipes with different loudspeak- end. I used 3-diameter fiber tubes to By blocking the end of the pipe, I was
ers and stuffing materials. This seemingly make pipes 2, 3, and 5 long. I also able to measure leakage from the loud-
simple exercise gradually grew into a made a 6 pipe from 4-diameter PVC speaker at the other end. Crosstalk in the
full-blown research project, the goals of tubing and built several pipes with rec- 2 pipe was about 25dB. It was down
which were to develop a computer ana- tangular cross sections. more than 30dB in the 5 and 6 pipes. If
log capable of modeling transmission- Figure 1 shows my basic test setup. I
line systems, to validate the model by set the test pipe horizontally on a trestle, TABLE 1
testing a variety of designs, and to devel- about 40 above the floor, and connect- SYMBOLS USED
op basic performance relationships simi- ed a calibrated Bruel & Kjaer 4134 mi- f3 3dB corner frequency of low-frequency rolloff
lar to the Thiele/Small analysis of vented crophone to my TEF20 analyzer. I ran fP nominal quarter-wave pipe resonance frequency
boxes. I presented my findings at the sweeps from 20Hz1kHz with a fre- f0 actual pipe fundamental-resonance frequency
107th convention of the Audio Engineer- quency resolution of 10Hz, giving accu- fS speaker resonance frequency
fL frequency of lower impedance peak
ing Society in September 1999. rate readings down to about 25Hz, and
fH frequency of first upper impedance peak
For the readers of Speaker Builder, also ran impedance curves using the QTS total Q of speaker
however, I wish to go more deeply into voltage-divider method. The TEF system VAS volume of air having compliance equivalent to
the practical aspects of the study and to stores all measurements as sets of com- speaker cone suspension
elaborate upon two areas I only touched plex data points, preserving both ampli- VP internal volume of pipe, including coupling
chamber
on in the AES paper. First, that the be- tude and phase. VC internal volume of coupling chamber
havior of stuffing materials is not what I made frequency-response tests using
MINIMIZING ERRORS
To minimize such errors, I first made
sure that cone areas closely matched
pipe areas so that no scaling was needed. FIGURE 2:
Then, for each measurement I carefully Transmission-line analog circuit.
aligned the microphone with the edge of
FIGURE 4A: Response of loudspeaker on straight pipe with FIGURE 4C: Response of loudspeaker on straight pipe with
light damping. Impedance, cone output, pipe output, and heavy damping. Impedance, cone output, pipe output, and
system response (bold). system response (bold).
under that nice vinyl jacket. Eventually tion of parallel and series resistance. agree closely with measured perfor-
corrosion sets in, and you now have a Moreover, there is a certain elegance in mance for a variety of pipe sizes and
few diodes and a few ohms of series re- using an electrical transmission line to shapes.
sistance as part of your test hookup. If model an acoustical transmission line.
the patch cord connects a 50 genera- Those interested in a more detailed ex- LOUDSPEAKER AND PIPE BEHAVIOR
tor to a 5k input, it works just fine, but planation of the computer model can What happens when you put a loud-
if it connects a power amplifier to a 4 obtain a preprint of my AES paper.6 speaker on one end of a pipe and then
loudspeaker, the measurements are As with other transmission-line mod- gradually add stuffing? Figures 3 and 4
worthless. els, the hangup is the stuffing. But at the show a typical example of what I actual-
start of this study, the computer program ly measured. These are computer plots,
COMPUTER SIMULATIONS was required only to mimic known per- but they are derived from measurements
One goal of this project was to develop formance with one loudspeaker and on a 3 pipe. To make the curves easier
a computer analog to predict the behav- then to calculate what would happen to read, the physical length of the pipe is
ior of various kinds of damped pipes when using a different loudspeaker. In scaled down so that its quarter-wave res-
driven by various speakers. Undamped this regard, its predictions have proven onance is exactly 100Hz.
pipes and horns are well understood. to be remarkably accurate. Most of the According to some transmission-line
Relatively simple methods for modeling gremlins described in the previous sec- theorists, the loudspeakers cone reso-
arbitrary horn shapes have also been tion were discovered because test results nance should match pipe resonance.
described.3,4 did not match computer curves. The speaker I used for this example has a
I elected to work up a computer ver- After I had accumulated several dozen cone resonance of 100Hz. QTS is 0.46
sion of Locanthis horn analog 5 and sets of test results, I was able to derive and VAS is 0.11ft3.
modify it for transmission-line modeling empirical models for different kinds and What about speaker diameter and
(Fig. 2). This circuit makes it easy to in- densities of damping materials and in- pipe diameter? Thiele/Small analysis
vestigate arbitrary pipe shapes, and you clude them in the computer analog. I should have taught us that cone diame-
can include damping as any combina- am still tinkering with these, but results ter is not directly related to anything.
SIMPLE TRANSMISSION-LINE
ALIGNMENTS
Table 2 summarizes the loudspeaker/
pipe relationships of Figs. 5 and 6,
which you can use as multipurpose
alignments. To achieve the classic, slight-
ly bass-shy alignment of Fig. 4b, simply
reduce QTS by half, thus raising mid-
range sensitivity by 3dB. To simulate an
infinite pipe, increase stuffing density by
about 50% and assume that f3 will go up
about 25%.
Well and good, but what is the stuff-
ing density for these alignments? For a
100Hz pipe, you can realize the perfor-
mance shown with 1.75 lb polyester
blanket or Acousta-Stuf. For a 50Hz pipe,
the corresponding density is 1.0 lb/ft3.
Other materials require different densi-
ties. There is no direct correlation be-
tween pipe length and stuffing density.
These examples are only two of hun-
dreds of possible alignments, but they
TABLE 2
LOUDSPEAKER/PIPE
RELATIONSHIPS
FIGURE F3/FP FS/FP VAS/VP QTS
5 1.0 0.50 2.0 0.46
6 0.6 0.33 1.0 0.36
are typical of what you can do with a sound sources are close together, then room, the perceived low-frequency re-
basic transmission line. Efficiency is it is also equivalent to acoustic power sponse is dominated by reflected sound
25dB less than a comparable closed response. energy. Therefore, a folded transmission
box, no matter which low-frequency But if pipe output is appreciable and line may indeed sound different than an
rolloff you prefer. Fortunately, as I will the two sources are even a fraction of a otherwise identical straight pipe, be-
show in Part 3, it is possible to improve wavelength apart (an inevitable by-prod- cause its power response and directivity
the situation by building something uct of a straight pipe), then some inter- are different. To the best of my knowl-
other than a simple straight pipe. esting directional effects are generated, edge, Geoffrey Letts is the only
and power response no longer tracks on- researcher who has commented on
DIRECTIONAL EFFECTS axis response. In a typical listening this.2
To conclude Part 1, I wish to point out a
peculiarity of transmission-line response
measurements. I stated that the com-
plex sum of cone output and pipe out-
put yields system response. This is un-
derstood to be on-axis system response.
That is, the microphone is equidistant
from the loudspeaker and the mouth of
the pipe. If the pipe is folded so the two
REFERENCES
1. D. B. Keele, Jr., Low Frequency Loudspeaker As-
sessment by Nearfield Sound-Pressure Measure-
ment, JAES, Vol. 22, April 1974.
2. Geoffrey Letts, A Study of Transmission Line Loud-
speaker Systems, Honors Thesis, The University of
Sydney, School of Electrical Engineering, 1975.
3. K. R. Holland, F. J. Fahy, and C. L. Morfey, Predic-
tion and Measurement of the One-Parameter Behavior
of Horns, JAES., Vol. 39, May, 1991.
4. Dan Mapes-Riordan, Horn Modeling with Conical
and Cylindrical Transmission-Line Elements, JAES,
Vol. 41, June, 1993.
5. Bart N. Locanthi, Application of Electric Circuit
Analogies to Loudspeaker Design Problems, JAES,
Vol. 19, October, 1971.
6. G. L. Augspurger, Loudspeakers on Damped
PipesPart One: Modeling and Testing; and Part
Two: Behavior, Preprint 5011 (F-1), Audio Engineer-
ing Society, 60 East 42 Street, New York, NY 10165-
2250.
7. Benjamin Olney, A Method of Eliminating Cavity
Resonance, Extending Low Frequency Response and
Increasing Acoustic Damping in Cabinet Type Loud-
speakers, Journal of the Acoustical Society of Ameri-
ca, Vol. 8, October, 1936.
Reader Service #88