Chapter 7

Loudspeaker behaviour in rooms

7.1 The anechoic and reverberation chambers

It is customary to measure loudspeakers in anechoic chambers, which represent as closely as possible a free acoustic field with no boundaries. The wedges which line the surfaces of most chambers serve to avoid abrupt changes in acoustic impedance and absorb from all angles to a uniform degree. The very high degree of absorption achievable with such systems functions down to a frequency where the length of the wedges exceeds one quarter of the wavelength. Below this frequency the absorption begins to reduce, and reflexions begin to occur. A room with one metre wedges would therefore be anechoic down to a frequency which has a four metre wavelength, which corresponds ...

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