Subject of this masters thesis is development and creation of passive wideband studio loudspeakers. Genelec 8040B loudspeakers, which are well recognized in professional audio, have been used for test research purposes in Laboratory of metrology and quality on Faculty of electrical engineering for some time now, They perform well in practice as well as on paper. Due to only having one pair of loudspeakers, that need to be transported between different rooms, arised the need for a second pair of loudspeakers which will perform similar duty with similar characteristics. Me and my mentor created a list of technical requirements of newly developed loudspeakers and from then on, I was mostly on my own to choose components and create a final product.
At first I studied the reference Genelec 8040B loudspeaker, followed by a choice of bass and treble loudspeaker units. The choice of low frequency driver was validated with low frequency enclosure simulations with different resonant systems. Passive radiator was chosen based on these simulations to achieve lower frequency response roll-off and reduce harmonic distortion at those low frequencies. Following simulations, two symmetrical enclosures were made out of 19 mm thick medium density fiber board (MDF). A tweeter waveguide was made by casting fiberglass reinforced epoxy resin. This waveguide is used to change directivity pattern of the tweeter so that it matches directivity of a woofer in frequency band from 1 kHz to 2 kHz. This is crucial for easier crossover design and smooth final directivity pattern. Design of crossover was based on simulations which used acoustic measurements and frequency dependent impedance characteristics as input parameters. Many versions of crossover were physically assembled and the process of improvement was repeated until satisfactory sound was achieved. The final version of the crossover was built in to the loudspeaker enclosure. On-axis frequency response with included harmonic distortion of the loudspeaker and its directivity measurements were performed in the anechoic chamber at the Faculty of electrical engineering.
Measurements show that the loudspeakers fulfill all input requirements and they perform even better than expected at frequencies lower than 40 Hz.
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