This paper describes a full vector intensity probe which advances the field of sound intensity and sound source direction estimation using six matched rotating and variable directional microphones. The probe has three pairs of microphones at an equal spacing of 30 mm that are set up in each of the x, y, and z directions and share the same observation point. The calibration method using the rotating microphone system is effective to correct position errors in the y- and z-axes microphone pairs. Sound intensity measurements using the variable directional microphone method can locate with accuracy a sound source, i.e., the structure parts radiating most acoustic energy. The system can find the maximum sound intensity level and beamwidth of the major lobe, and the peak sound intensity levels of the minor lobes. Therefore, a procedure for sound power determination based on minimum measurement data is theoretically and experimentally discussed. Consequently, it is possible to reconstruct only parts of the system emitting the most noise and measure efficiently the sound power level.

No abstract

In this paper, an electrodynamic planar loudspeaker driven by a digital signal is experimentally discussed. The digital loudspeaker consists of 22 voice coils, 11 permanent magnets, a diaphragm with streamlined sections molded in plastic, and a suspension made of handmade Japanese paper between the diaphragm and the frame. First, the acoustic responses are affected by the arrangement of the voice coils, so an asymmetric arrangement is studied. This asymmetric arrangement is designed to obtain as flat a frequency response to an analog signal as possible. This arrangement is compared with a symmetric one and results show that the flatness of the frequency response around 1 kHz and 4 kHz is improved and that the sound reproduction band is from 40 Hz to 10 kHz. Second, to evaluate the acoustic responses to a digital signal, the digital loudspeaker is driven with a pulse code modulation signal. Results show that the digital loudspeaker can reproduce pure sound with a total harmonic distortion of less than 5% from 40 Hz to 10 kHz, exceeding this value only in a narrow frequency band near 4 kHz. This digital loudspeaker was demonstrated to have good linearity over its dynamic range of 84 dB.

The noise level and the effective noise level used for noise evaluation are physical indices and generally are not understood. It is believed that the understanding of such physical indices can be enhanced if one can realize a sound level meter which can display directly the relationship of the psychological effect by the noise with the measured decibel scale. From this point of view, this paper first evaluates in a laboratory experiment the relationship between the hue level expressing the psychological effect and the effective sound level. According to the obtained noiserating scale, the five‐hue scale, “red, purple, yellow, green, blue” and the effective noise level correlate well. Next, a new sound level meter including the obtained noise‐rating scale (to be called the hue sound level meter) and the existing sound level meter displaying only the measured value were compared at the actual measurement site. From the comparison, it was found that the hue sound level meter has better visual display and the display represents the auditory sense. From the foregoing results, it is possible to promote general understanding of the physical index.

The present study extends our previous work [Furihata et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 114, 174-184 (2003)] by investigating our electrodynamic planar loudspeaker when driven by a 12 bit digital signal with noise shaping. Changing the structure of the loudspeaker can lead to improvement, but in this paper improvements that can be made using signal processing are investigated. Results show that the digital loudspeaker demonstrated good linearity over its 84 dB dynamic range from 40 Hz to 10 kHz. This shows that a 12 bit digital loudspeaker which is equivalent to a 16 bit one is possible.