CMU School of Drama


Wednesday, January 19, 2022

How do you calculate cardioid subwoofer spacing? (gradient array)

www.sounddesignlive.com: Here’s how I used to space the 2-element in-line gradient array (the wrong way): forward maximum summation at a center frequency. Calculated like this: One quarter wavelength of the geometric mean of the operating range. ¼(√(F1 * F2))

2 comments:

Jessica Williams said...

I can say with absolute and utmost certainty that I had no idea that this much math went into sound design which I suppose is kind of obvious now that I understand a little more. I knew that some math went into the design of the sound output placements around the theater but I had never encountered detailed graphs and simulations of what happens with different designs before. I had always arrogantly assumed that a certain amount of trial and error or at least natural instinct went into the placement but now that I think about it this level of detail makes a lot of sense, especially as theatre is meant to be something that draws you in without you knowing it, what better way than to enact that through sound design to subconsciously convince the audience that they are now in this world with the characters.

Logan Donahue said...

This is probably one of the most niche articles I have read. I had never expected there to be such high complexity math. I admire the way that the article itself is structured. The way the writing is effectively explaining the material while also keeping it very casual and easy to follow along. At the same time, I’m extremely curious as to how someone goes about figuring these formulas, theories, and wavelengths while working solely with numbers and graphs and not in a real experimental space. Regardless, the graphs, diagrams, and videos throughout the article really helped me grasp some of the ideas being talked about. I think especially when talking about a dense topic like this, it makes it much easier to understand, rather than trying to interpret the meaning through just words. I still don’t fully understand how this would be used and implemented into real-world applications, but it’s very good to know that someone has already done the work if I ever needed to know this.