Chapter 2

How Loudspeakers Work

This chapter is not in any way a guide to how to design loudspeakers, nor is it a complete explanation of how they work; what it does do is look at their functioning from the point of view of the crossover designer. The specific topic of time-aligning the drive units is dealt with in Chapter 13 on delay compensation.

There are many ways to make a loudspeaker. Some of the less common types are electrostatics, ribbon loudspeakers, electromagnetic planar loudspeakers, Heil air-motion transformers, and the rather worrying Ionophone. These are dealt with only briefly in this chapter, but plenty of references are given for further reading. Here I must concentrate on the most popular concepts: sealed boxes, ported reflex ...

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