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The University of Southampton
Engineering

How do we make an electrostatic loudspeaker with constant directivity? Seminar

Time:
16:00
Date:
25 October 2016
Venue:
Highfield Campus 13/3017

For more information regarding this seminar, please email Rameen Mustafa at R.Mustafa@soton.ac.uk .

Event details

The advantages of electrostatic loudspeakers are well known. The absence of any kind of box enclosure means that the sound is free from unwanted resonances and the very low moving mass enables them to follow musical transients accurately. However, a relatively large flat diaphragm can be very directive at higher frequencies unless some sort of progressive delay is applied so that the sound from the rim leaves at some time interval after that from the centre to create a curved wave front. Conventionally, the delay is arranged to mimic a point source behind the diaphragm but this has to be attenuated, or “windowed” due to the finite size. Hence a new compact electrostatic design is described here in which the diaphragm behaves more like an oscillating sphere, which is self-windowing. The prototype loudspeaker will be demonstrated. No registration required

Speaker information

Tim Mellow, Mellow Acoustics. Tim Mellow has worked for many years in industry, initially as an electronics design engineer but more recently as an acoustical engineer. Following the closure of the Nokia site in Farnborough four years ago, he has worked as a freelance acoustical consultant, designing a range of different products from microphone arrays to Bluetooth loudspeakers. In 2012 he published Acoustics: Sound Fields and Transducers with Leo Beranek as co-author and has been developing the compact electrostatic loudspeaker described in this seminar.

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