

How speakers make sound - lowglow
http://animagraffs.com/loudspeaker/

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baddox
On the other end of the audio stack, I highly recommend this multipart video
lecture about microphone design. The guy is a legit microphone engineer who
knows what he's talking about and explains it really well. Some of the
principles, like how directional vs. omnidirectional microphones work, are
actually quite intuitive and much simpler than I would have guessed.

[https://youtube.com/watch?v=ihAG6cMpUlY](https://youtube.com/watch?v=ihAG6cMpUlY)

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ak217
Cool! Any recommendations for good reads on DACs/ADCs?

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worewood
Man, studied those at the university, those things are very complicated...

I mean, simple ones are easily explained, but they sound awful, so to get a
usable one it takes lots of theory.

Unlike speakers, which you can build at home and can sound OK.

That said, wikipedia is a surprisingly good source on this. Also, this circuit
simulator ([http://www.falstad.com/circuit/](http://www.falstad.com/circuit/))
comes with some DAC/ADC circuits builtin, and you can watch them live.

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icarot
Sincerely thought this was an article on [articulatory] phonetics.

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saeguaiga
Howlers: Flatscreen monitor (fondleslab) and laptop speakers alienated. Render
disturbingly fast and lightweight, awesome producer Jacob O'Neal. Nothing
selectable but entire canvas/Naked URL citation missing colophon. Signal from
eardrum, not cochlear hair cells (...maybe whiskers too.) Air (N2) as elastic.
No transfer functions; dancing expected to mirror
Taylor.teaTimePerceptionChunk{17000, 13, 35000, (watts30 x
float42stream.noflanging(in('68000Hz','4ch.voivod.mono'))} Should be pOut<=
MassiveDriverEmulation{'fineweather','speccyraised800Wbox','5M','4ch.voivod.mono'}
x vSpeakerModelCrossing{'NFlanger1400.a','OneTrueSong_flac','20uf'} Crossing
magnetic lines...tell me on machines with spare cores it rendered convolved
lines?

[http://www.analog.com/library/analogdialogue/](http://www.analog.com/library/analogdialogue/)
are lovely, though Linear and Maxim have made nice utilitarian reads on their
own, and it doesn't seem complete without some Dolby n.n exegesis from TI.com
and other notes. ObReactiveDesign would I suppose cover indirect sound
emission off ear canal apertures...or say, cavitation in airborne particles.

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lovelearning
Loved the car engine one too! His interview [1] has details on tools and
processes used.

[1]: [http://blogs.adobe.com/creativecloud/animagraffs-
education-a...](http://blogs.adobe.com/creativecloud/animagraffs-education-
animated-by-jacob-oneal/)

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alricb
Well, you also need a box that's adapted to the speaker, otherwise it won't
make much sound.

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beloch
It'll make plenty of sound. It'll just be very distorted. Think of it this
way: The front face of the speaker cone makes the desired soundwave, while the
rear face makes the same soundwave, only counter-propagating and out of phase.
If the cone were acoustically invisible (but somehow still magically able to
push air to create soundwaves) and the soundwaves coming from the rear face of
the cone were magically reflected to the front, the two soundwaves would
indeed cancel out. That doesn't happen in the real world though, and what you
get is an out of phase signal somewhat delayed, causing all sorts of
unintended interaction with the front soundwave.

Some people think the enclosure's function is to resonate, similar to the body
of a violin or other stringed instrument. This is totally false. Cabinet
resonances are undesirable distortion in a speaker intended for sound
_reproduction_. This is why good speakers are heavily dampened. Although it's
a little rough, some people like the "knock test". If you're buying speakers,
give the side a few soft raps with your knuckles in several different places.
If it booms like a hollow box, it's bad. If it sounds like you're knocking on
a solid chunk of wood, that's good.

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mturmon
Not disagreeing, but: Bass reflex designs are an exception to some of what
you've written. They essentially use the reflected sound wave you've mentioned
to increase the output in certain low frequencies, by letting it out of a
specially constructed hole in that solid cabinet.

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S_A_P
I'm sure that you're using simplified terms to explain this but bass reflex
enclosures don't use reflected sound per se. It's a heimholtz resonator(like
blowing across the top of a glass bottle) and the air in the port is in phase
with the front of the speaker until it's tuning frequency at which point it
rolls off more steeply than a sealed enclosure because of phase cancellation.

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mreiland
It completely amazes me sometimes the shit people know.

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baddox
It would be weird if these speakers existed without there existing anyone who
knew this stuff.

