Tech Briefs Magazine - October 2021 - 31a

DEMOCRATIZING SIMULATION
FIGURE 3       
      
FIGURE 2  
   
conveying the aural power of live
performance. While the typical
concertgoer or sports fan most likely has
not heard of L-Acoustics, they have likely
heard from the company's loudspeakers,
amplifiers, and signal processing devices.
Based in France, L-Acoustics has supplied
sound systems to more than 10,000 venues
in 80 countries, and their equipment has
been used by half of the top 20 music
festivals worldwide.
Great performance is rooted in
relentless dedication to craft. L-Acoustics
also must constantly hone and refine its
products to work in harmony with all
of these varied performance spaces. For
instance, the size and shape of speaker
enclosures can have a big impact on
sound quality. To ensure that audiences
are able to lose themselves in the sound
of a performance, L-Acoustics engineers
use simulation to help reveal the effect
that enclosure and vent design has on
acoustical output and linearity.
Just as live performers show us the
precise physical movements that create
their music, multiphysics simulation now
lets L-Acoustics " see " the forces shaping
the sound of its bass reflex speaker units.
» LIKE A LASER FOR SOUND:
THE L-ACOUSTICS VISION
You may be surprised to find that many
old and respected venues, from the
Hollywood Bowl in California to Sakura
Hall in Japan, feature sound systems
made by a company that is less than 40
years old. Physicist Christian Heil launched
L-Acoustics in 1984, and in 1992, the
company introduced its V-DOSC line source
array technology, which quickly became
the global standard for professional
loudspeaker systems. A line source array
projects sound in a remarkably focused,
controlled way, comparable to the way
that a laser directs light. A laser's potential
power is inseparable from its precision,
which is true of loudspeakers as well.
" We want to create a loudspeaker
enclosure that is as linear as possible, "
says Yoachim Horyn, head of Acoustics
Research at L-Acoustics. " We try to
remove any amount of energy that
is emitted at higher frequencies or
harmonics, rather than the intended
frequency. No matter how much we
increase input power, we want the
resulting sound to be the same, only
louder. " Distortion, however, is only
part of the problem. Nonlinearities can
emerge with a global loss of output at
the emitted frequency.
Along with engineering of the
loudspeaker driver itself, the design of a
speaker's housing or enclosure plays an
important role in its performance. For
example, a bass reflex enclosure design
incorporates a vented opening called a
Helmholtz resonator. By connecting the
interior volume of the speaker housing
to the outside air, a resonator can help
recover part of the energy emitted inside
the enclosure that would otherwise
be lost. This boosts power, but it also
introduces turbulence, which distorts
the speaker's output and can also cause
FIGURE 4        
        
COMSOL NEWS 31a
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Tech Briefs Magazine - October 2021

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