November 2017 Meeting Report
FINE Speaker Test & Design
On Monday November 13th Peter Larsen, President and founder of loudspeaker design and testing software company LOUDSOFT presented to the AES Melbourne Section on the topic “Loudspeaker Design & Test Methods”
Peter started by summarizing his career to date starting with his working for several Scandinavian loudspeaker companies, and JBL in the US, culminating in the founding of LOUDSOFT in 2001.
He then went on to describe his Fine Circle suite of software for loudspeaker design and testing. He described the FINEMotor magnet/voice-coil design program, the FINECone Dome/Cone simulation program, FINE X-over crossover simulation program, and FINE DSP for active loudspeaker design.
Peter then quickly stepped through the use of FineMotor, FINECone, and FINE DSP for speaker design tasks, and then went on to cover testing speaker designs with his FINE QC and FINE R&D software modules.
He covered testing loudspeakers, microphones, headphones, and Bluetooth devices.
Peter then described some of the drivers he has designed, and presented a case study of a cone design done for a particular speaker (B&O Beolab 3), and how his software simulation was able to prove the suspected deficiency of a design, and identify a solution without the need for expensive tooling required for physical prototyping.
He then discussed his vision for the LOUDSOFT Academy where training can be provided to allow engineers from related disciplines to achieve skills at an advanced acoustic level.
A demonstration of the FINECone and FINEMotor software followed, where Peter put the modules through their paces with various examples of tweaking the simulations’ extensive parameters to optimize performance.
Following these demonstrations Peter spoke on the use of the FINE DSP module to control loudspeaker sound power in situations where an active loudspeaker design was being developed.
He demonstrated the use of FINE DSP in this application to optimize the performance, both on-axis and off-axis. He also commented that using his simulation, a typical 2-way 15” PA speaker could be made to perform at “near hi-fi” level for all but the widest dispersion angles.
A demonstration of the FINE DSP software followed to show how it can be used for passive crossovers as well, with the only limitation being that using only passive components restricts the designer to using attenuation only, not gain boost.
The evening concluded with a Q&A, covering a diverse range of topics.
A video has been assembled of the slides and audio from the talk.
The software demonstration section of the evening has been not included in the video due to the absence of suitable vision from this section.
The Video can also be viewed directly on YouTube at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3k9ezaOq9o
PDF copies of the two slide decks used on the evening can be viewed or downloaded below:
-and-
The audio only recording (including software demonstrations) can be heard or downloaded here
A special thanks to The SAE Institute for the use of their excellent facilities