AES San Francisco 2008
Acoustics Event L2
Thursday, October 2, 2:30 pm — 4:30 pmL2 - The SOTA of Designing Loudspeakers for Live Sound
Chair:
Tom Young, Electroacoustic Design Services
Panelists:
Tom Danley, Danley Sound Labs
Ales Dravinec, ADRaudio
Dave Gunness, Fulcrum Acoustic
Charlie Hughes, Excelsior Audio Design
Pete Soper, Meyer Sound
Abstract:
The loudspeakers we employ today for live sound (all levels, all types) are vastly improved over what we had on hand when R&R first exploded and pushed the limits of what was available back in the 1960s. Following a brief glimpse back in time (to provide a reality check on where we were when many of us started in this field) we will define where we are now. Along with advances made in enclosure design and fabrication, horn design, driver design, system engineering and fabrication, ergonomics and rigging, etc., we now are implementing various methods to improve the overall performance of the drivers and the loudspeaker systems we use, not to mention the advanced methods employed to optimize large systems, improve directivity, beam-steer, etc.
Much of this advancement, at least over the past 15 years or so, is directly related to our use of computers as a design tool for modeling, for complex measurements (both in the lab and in the field) as well as DSP for implementing various processing and monitoring functions. We will clarify what we can do with modern day loudspeakers/systems and where we still need to push further. We may even get our panelists to imagine where they believe we may be headed over the next 5–10 years.