Convention Paper
Horns Near Reflecting Boundaries
AES Convention 139 · Paper 9412 · October 2015
Abstract
It is well known that when a sound source is placed near one or more walls, the power output increases due to the mutual coupling between the source and its image sources. This is reflected in an increase in the low frequency radiation resistance as seen by the sources. While direct radiating loudspeakers may benefit from this whenever the sources are within about a quarter wavelength of each other, horns will behave differently depending on if the increase in radiation resistance comes within the pass band of the horn or not. This has implications for the placement of corner horns. In this paper the Mode Matching Method (MMM) is used together with the modal mutual radiation impedance and the concept of image sources to compute the throat impedance and radiated sound pressure of horns placed near infinite, perpendicular reflecting boundaries. The MMM is compared with another numerical method, the Boundary Element Rayleigh Integral Method (BERIM), and with measurements and is shown to give good agreement with both. The MMM also has significantly shorter computation time than BERIM, making it attractive for use for the initial iterations of a design, or for optimization procedures.
