![]() ![]() |
Audio Asylum Thread Printer Get a view of an entire thread on one page |
For Sale Ads |
47.14.96.233
In Reply to: RE: What makes a driver High Efficiency? posted by tomservo on May 28, 2023 at 06:47:31
If you haven't already seen it, you might enjoy the link below. Harry Olson (at RCA Labs back in the 1950's) did some amazing theoretical work on acoustics, speakers, and the like. You don't have to wade into the mathematics if you don't feel like it - his text alone is pretty illuminating.
Follow Ups:
Why horns have higher sensitivity, and why direct radiators have lower sensitivity, is simple: impedance. For efficient energy transfer you need a low impedance source and a high impedance load. That's the case with electronic devices, it's the case with speakers. The problem is that the load that speakers deal with is air, and air has very low impedance. If we could use very low impedance drivers, say 1/100 ohm, we could realize far better sensitivity, but at the cost of current demands that our amplifier technology cannot even approach. A horn is an impedance transformer, just like a transformer is in an electronic circuit. It better matches the high impedance of the driver source to the low impedance of the air load. It's not all that different than how the output transformers of tube amps match the higher impedance tube sources to the lower impedance speaker loads.
He has to be the most prolific inventor in audio there ever was and as the late Don Davis said " the ancients are stealing our inventions".
I used some of his approach to the explanation in the chapter on loudspeakers in the book below. I tried to make it a visual analogy explanation as previous issues were heavy on math but shallow on explanations someone unfamiliar would understand.
https://www.routledge.com/Handbook-for-Sound-Engineers/Ballou/p/book/9780415842938
FAQ |
Post a Message! |
Forgot Password? |
|
||||||||||||||
|
This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors: