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AES British Section lectures - November 2007


Accurate sound reproduction from two loudspeakers in a living room

Siegfried Linkwitz

www.linkwitzlab.com November lecturer Siegfried Linkwitz

If the goal is accurate sound reproduction from two channels, then there must be an optimum set of room and loudspeaker features. Ideally, the listener is not aware of the loudspeakers or the room. This puts requirements on loudspeaker, room and listener, which are not that difficult to fulfill, but are mostly ignored. Omni-directional and dipole loudspeakers will be discussed.

Siegfried Linkwitz's motto has always been to be "true to the original, as it was recorded" - to reproduce a recording without adding or subtracting from it either because of the loudspeakers or the room. Active in the audio field for over 40 years, and motivated by his love for music with a keen interest in the difficulties of reproducing music realistically in the home, after retiring from Hewlett-Packard he pursued his investigation of the loudspeaker-room-listener interaction with refreshed energy and time. In the late nineties he developed the Beethoven/Dvorak/Vivaldi line of open-baffle loudspeakers for Audio Artistry.

His objective has always been the development of cost effective loudspeaker systems for two-channel sound playback of the highest accuracy. He is rarely bound by commercial considerations or restricted by market expectations and so is free to search for the parameters that are truly important to realistic reproduction.

Siegfried's website has a wealth of useful and practical information about loudspeaker design, electro-acoustic system design and about perception of sound from loudspeakers in normal rooms.

Lecture recording - mp3 format (24.5 MB)

Presentation slides - pdf format (3.8 MB)

Lecture report

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