Speakers page
Index
General articles
Speaker placement tips
Speaker product information
New technologies
- HyperSonic Sound - technique based on ultrasonic transmitters and uses nonlinearity of air/ears
History
The ugly truth: Any length of speaker cable degrades performance and efficiency.
A simple fact to remember on speaker cables: Current needs copper, voltage needs insulation.
Copper is a very good conductor of electricity, but it isn't perfect. It has a certain amount of resistance, determined primarily on its cross-sectional area (but also by its purity and temperature). This wiring resistance is "seen" by the amplifier output as part of the load in sreias of the actual load. Since increasing the load
impedance decreases current flow, decreasing power delivery, we have lost some of the amplifier's power capability merely by adding the series resistance of the cable to the load. There is a definite impact on the amplifier damping factor caused by cabling resistance/impedance. Damping, the ability of the amplifier to control the movement of the speaker, is especially noticeable in percussive low-frequency program material like kick drum, bass guitar and tympani. Boomy, mushy bass is the result of poor damping and clean "tight" bass is a sign of good damping at work.
In short, you need thick enough wires and you are happy with
the losses caused by resitance and on the damping factor.
Aonither rule of thumb is that 4-ohm load should require conductors with twice the
copper of an 8-ohm load, assuming the length of the run to the speaker is the same
and you want same performance.
The extremely low impedance nature of speaker circuits makes cable capacitance a very minor factor in overall performance and the dielectric properties of the insulation used are nowhere critical on speaker cables compared to the effect of speaker wire resistance.
If the spaker cable is going to be soldered to the connector the most important consideration for insulation for speaker cables is then probably heat resistance
(so that the cable insulation van take the soldering temperature nicely).
How to read speaker specs
Loudspaker effiency
Speaker impedance details
General information
Information on speaker element parameters
Speaker element parameter lists
Speaker building sites and tips
Other useful pages
General speaker measurement information
Speaker element parameters
- Measuring Loudspeaker Parameters - There are several different ways to measure the Thiele/Small parameters of a loudspeaker driver. The method described here provides a way for the beginner and DIY enthusiast to measure the parameters without any expensive or specialised equipment.
- Measuring speaker parameters - it's possible to get most of the Thiele-Small parameters from a loudspeaker by just accurately measuring the impedance versus frequency
Measurement software
- Audia Speaker Workshop - you can download alpha release of the software, read also How to use Speaker Workshop from Audua
- DAQARTA - Real-time FFT spectrum / color spectrogram / waveform display on any DOS system, using popular sound cards or laboratory data acquisition board
- LoudSpeaker LAB English version 2.0 homepage - new version of a good loudspeaker measurement software
- Energy Time Frequency - measure room acoustics and speaker response, free demo version available
- Liberty Instruments Test Suite - commercial measurement software and hardware solution, performs with similar features to MLSSA, free demo version downloadable
- Sound Technology - makes measurement software, free demo versions available
- Microacoustics PC AUDIO LAB version 1.1 - speaker and acoustics measurements using Soundblaster 16 or Media Vision PAS16
- WINSWEEP - loudspeaker and acoustics measurement software, web pages in German, try automatic translation to English, demo version available, but it can't do real measurements
Other related software and utilities
Downloadable software for PC
- Audua Speaker Workshop - design and analysis software, free pre-release version available for downloading, measures speaker element parameters, take also look at How to use Speaker Workshop from Audua
- Bill McFadden's Home Page - speaker element specifications and box design software
- Bullock & White Software - DOS BoxModel, Windows BoxModel demo, driver database, system and lattice simulator, speaker models, Delphi math units
- CALSOD page by Sonic Design - professional loudspeaker design software, free demo available
- CALSOD page by Audiosoft Developers - program for computer-aided loudspeaker system optimization and design, free demo available
- Hi-Fi A/V Software - Visual Ears speaker in room simulator and speaker design programs
- Home Theater / Audio / Video Related Computer Software - spaker placement and speaker design
- HornCalc for Windows 95 and NT - calculates the tractrix horn contour, free demo available
- JBL-Smaart - Practical Windows® Based Sound System Optimization and Acoustical Analysis Software, free demo available
- LspCAD Professional - commercial software, free demo available
- Speaker designing software from rec.audio.high-end
- Speaker Workshop - speaker design software, alpha versio available for downloading
- Wayne's World Program Archives - lots of speaker design and modeling software
- WinISD - Windows version of Interactive Speaker Designer speaker designing program
- Winsub Subwoofer Designer - for Win95/NT
On-line web based software
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