Audiophile Headphones

Sick of thin bass when listening to your favorite music over headphones? Missing that cinematic surround sound experience when you are on the go? Craving the visceral bass impact of live concerts? Trying to get to 11, but your headphones are stalled out at 6.283?  Move over anemic earbuds, there’s a new product in town: BIGheadphones: Bass Impact Gear’s new headphone product, available in two versions: Premium 5.1 (shown below in a user trial) and Mega Premium 7.2 (coming soon).

Reviewers are raging about the unprecedented dynamics, midrange clarity, and sound stage:

“Perhaps it was in the region of articulation and musical dynamics that this system impressed the most.  The dynamic bloom from soft to extremely loud was exquisite, and so clearly delineated that listeners could unravel musical phrases down into the concert hall’s noise floor and below.” The Audio Critic

“BIGheadphones speak with an organic integrity. They are hewn from the living woodendangered old growth Amazonian timber… I wept openly when forced to return the demo model.”– Stereophile

“BIGheadphones make critical listening a joy rather than a strain.  I was flabbergasted by their brilliant pitch certainty.  The midrange sounds were open, clear, and stunningly present. Playback performance like this makes use of the word transparent not only forgivable, but mandatory.” Audiophilia

“The 5.1 has an innate flair for speed and control that is incomparable. The command of bass dynamics moves beyond effortlessness to nonchalance. My eyeballs were vibrating! My hands are still shaking as I write this review.”Sound and Vision

“…the most important innovation in audio reproduction since the permanent magnet.”  –Acta Acustica

“W.O.W.”Bose listening panel

Reviewers agree that BIGheadphones are a huge leap in audio reproduction technology, larger than vacuum tubes, Stroh violins, carbon microphones and Edison cylinders combined.

Relative to planar speakers, typical box speakers are unable to develop the proper surface loudness or intensity typical of large instruments such as the piano.  This audio feat poses no challenge for BIGheadphones. Computationally modeled and optimized by a small and highly trained team of expert acoustical engineers over a period of 13 years, BIGheadphones were inspired by ingeniously thinking “inside the box,” not outside the box.  At the obsolete exterior listening position, a typical loudspeaker rarely generates even a realistic classical music concert level, but inside that same speaker, the sound pressure levels can quite easily exceed the 115 dB of a stadium rock concert. This realization was the BIG breakthrough, but was only the beginning of the struggle pursued by our elite acoustical research team.  Our uberengineers had to break the chains of common design practice to breathe the refreshing mountain air of inside-the-box acoustics, where nearly everything is inverted.

To illustrate, achieving loud bass external to a speaker typically requires the box be a very large size.  However, inside the box, the bass response is naturally flat to the lowest frequencies, and the smaller the box the louder and more impactful it becomes. Further, our astute engineers shrewdly realized that the stop-band and pass-band inside and outside the box are also opposite, as illustrated in the enlightening plot below of the subwoofer section of BIGheadphones. The Blue curve shows the hyposonic level inside, extending well below 10 infrasonic Hz, while the Red curve shows the meager sound pressure level in the more traditional listening position two meters in front of them.  Notice how the passband outside the box begins at 2kHz, whereas the passband inside the box ends at 2 kHz.  How many other speaker systems can boast of a subwoofer response that is flat over more than three orders of magnitude?  Now that’s innovation!  And this is just the customer-average response—the bigger your head the broader the bandwidth that you can brag about to your audiophile friends.

The observant reader has already noticed that this plot shows BIGheadphone’s output level is a mere 142 dB – only 22 dB above the threshold of pain.  Note though that this is with a paltry 1 Watt input – in reality, they are capable of 17 dB higher output with the optional high output amplifier add-on kit, though this reduces the playback time to under 36 hours per charge.  And that’s just the subwoofer!  The industry-leading, consciousness-altering bass response shown above is augmented by five horn loaded, carbon fiber reinforced porcelain dome, 2” diameter neodymium tweeters with single crystal silver edge wound voice coils.  With this critical addition, the frequency response of the BIGheadphones extends from below 10 Hz to 31 kHz and beyond!  Get your BIGheadphone audition today at your local Hi-Fi retailer!  “BIGheadphones, the last audible note in audio reproduction!”

(Not available in France.)

Thanks to the editors at RSW, Inc.

Sonic Vista – An Art Installation

For a few months now, I’ve been acting as an acoustical consultant to Bruce Odland and Sam Auinger on their project “Sonic Vista,” that opened on October 2nd for a 5 year long installation.  Bruce and Sam have been making publicly installed sound art pieces in North America and Europe for over twenty years.  I first heard their work at MassMOCA  in 2006, and met Bruce while he was putting the finishing (soldering) touches on “Harmony in the Age of Noise” at Tufts University in 2008.  Sonic Vista is installed in Frankfurt, Germany on a train & pedestrian bridge connecting two sections of Frankfurt’s greenway, located here.

Sonic Vista is a real-time sound art installation.  It gathers all the airborne noise from the industrial cityscape, filters it acoustically, and plays the resulting harmonious sound back through two giant, brightly colored spherical speakers placed directly over the heads of listeners as they walk along the pedestrian bridge.  Walking along the bridge literally becomes a consciousness raising event as one enters the sonic environment of the piece.  Noise from the cityscape (backhoes, earth movers and jackhammers from the nearby bank construction site, trains, dogs, humans, jets, boats, busses, and other city roar) is captured by two 4” diameter, 18 foot long (B0) and 12 foot long (F#1) tubes, each containing one microphone.  The sound reaching the microphones is naturally filtered by the harmonic overtone series of acoustic modes supported by the long tubes.  These microphone signals travel directly to the speakers, and are not processed with any electronic effects (such as reverb or chorus).  To hear Sonic Vista, follow this link to SoundCloud.  The exact position of the microphone in each tube affects the harmonic balance it detects, as shown by the following plot:

I aided in the design of the 1 meter diameter spherical speakers, first in solving the directivity problem: How can the speakers be designed so that listeners walking along the pedestrian bridge hear a uniform sound pressure level as they walk?  The problem with overhead speakers is that they typically send most of their sound straight downward – so it is much louder directly under them than it is off to the side.  The problem is made more challenging by the wide bandwidth — the lowest note is 60 Hz, and the highest notes are near 3000 Hz.

I’ll skip all the math and acoustics theory, and just state the solution: a 12 inch diameter woofer needs to be positioned behind a 4 inch diameter hole that all the sound must exit through.  This greatly improves the radiation pattern for the highest notes.  The heights and horizontal spacing of the two speakers also play an important role in setting how loud the sound will be when one is in between the two speakers.  Interestingly, I was able to balance these factors and the system as built achieved a pressure that was uniform within a few dB as listeners walk along the bridge underneath the speakers.  The plot below shows the loudness as a function of position along the bridge at the highest and lowest pitches, along with the 35+ dB soundfield variation that would have resulted without this hole to fix the radiation pattern.  The speakers are located at 50m and 64.7m, the two loudest locations along the bridge.

The second problem arose due to the solution of the first:  That the speaker radiates through a 4” diameter, 4″ long port created an undesirable resonance that I correctly predicted through the use of a computational acoustics model.  This resonance was actually eliminated by simply equalizing the speakers electrically.

This front cavity does lead to the loss of almost half of the sound output, but it’s a high sensitivity, 300 Watt maximum input driver, so it is still more than capable of being loud enough.  This is a small price to pay for the tremendous improvement in radiation pattern and listener experience.  To hear Sonic Vista, follow this link to SoundCloud.

Rubens Tube Update!

The Rubens tube I made a while back puts on a fairly impressive show when its speaker is driven with music or a noise box, as was done during the Milwaukee Makerspace Grand Opening.  The story is somewhat different when it is used to display the acoustic standing wave pattern inside the tube.  When a single tone (sine wave) at a resonance frequency of the system is played though the speaker, the heights of the flames map out the sinusoidal shape along the length of the tube. There are two very important variables whose values determine how well this will work.  These are the acoustic pressure in the tube, which is set by the speaker and its input voltage, and the propane gas pressure, which is set by a regulator or the valve on the propane bottle.  Even a professionally made Rubens tube has a relatively small range of these two pressure settings that create a nice sine wave distribution of flame heights.

After running my Rubens tube for a short while, I realized I’d made a few design choices that make the already small range of good operating parameters even smaller.  First, I didn’t actually use a gas regulator, I only used the valve on the propane nozzle.  Note that the propane flow rate is highly affected by the temperature of the nozzle, so the propane tank must be kept in a water-filled bucket to prevent the outlet valve from freezing up.  Just like a gas pressure regulator can be used, so could an acoustic pressure regulator (i.e. a compressor).  This could help prevent the flames from extinguishing during particularly dynamic musical passages.  Alternately, some type of pilot light system could be devised so that the flames automatically relight – perhaps glowing red nichrome wire could be added in a moderately safe way.  I also spaced the fifty 0.043” diameter holes apart by only 0.9 inches.  Having this many holes reduces the amplitude of the resonances, making them more difficult to ‘find’ by simply listening to the amplitude when adjusting the frequency input to the speaker.   Better performance would be achieved by having fewer holes spaced further apart.  Lastly, I’ve used a pipe whose inner diameter is only 2.5 inches.  A larger diameter pipe would further increase the amplitude of the resonances.

I put an electret microphone inside the Rubens tube at the end opposite the speaker, and measured the pressure inside while electrically driving the speaker with pink noise.  I did this with both air and propane inside the tube.  The following graph shows the low amplitude of the tube’s resonances with propane inside — between 4 and 7 dB.

The other interesting bit of data one can find from this graph is the speed of sound in propane.  Knowing the sound speed, one can calculate either the length of pipe needed to have a particular fundamental resonance frequency (n=1) or if a particular speaker has a resonance frequency low enough to excite the fundamental resonance of a particular length Rubens tube.  The resonance frequencies of a tube having uniform cross sectional area and two rigidly closed ends are given by: Fn = nC/(2*L), where n is the nth mode, C is the sound speed, and L is the length of tube.  The Rubens tube doesn’t have two closed ends, it has a paper cone speaker at one end.  It also doesn’t have uniform area – it has a small open volume in front of the speaker.  Both of these will change the “effective” length of the tube.  Don’t worry though, we can use the measured resonance frequencies with air in the tube to calculate the effective length: Leff = nC/(2*Fn).  Knowing C=343 m/s in air, we can use the measured resonances of the first three modes  (144 Hz, 262 Hz and 380 Hz) to find that the (averaged) effective length is 1.28m.  Using this effective length and the lowest three resonance frequencies (108 Hz, 205 Hz, and 300 Hz) with propane in the tube, Fn = nC/(2*Leff) predicts the sound speed to be ~265 m/s.

Makerspace members or any other folks near Milwaukee should feel free to stop by (on Tuesdays or Thursdays evenings) and fire up the Rubens tube.  Just use a small amplifier so you don’t put more than 30 Watts into the 4” speaker!  For some scholarly information about Rubens tubes, check  out the series of articles in the journal “The Physics Teacher:”  M. Iona (14), p325 from 1976; T. Rossing (15), P260 from 1977; R Bauman (15) p448 from 1977; and G. Flicken (17) p306 from 1979.

Audio Switch Boxes!

I was recently comparing several powered speaker systems, but didn’t like the audible *Pop* I heard when plugging and unplugging the 3.5mm headphone jack into each of them.  I made a switchbox that eliminates this pop by switching the one input (my mobile phone) to any of the four outputs.  I didn’t have the right rotary switch at the time I built it, so it actually has two knobs that select where the input signal goes, meaning I can have two systems playing at the same time.  Alternately, the box can be used to switch either of two inputs selected with one knob to either of two outputs selected with the second knob.  Even more alternately, the box can be used to switch four inputs to a single output.

I few days later, after I purchased(!) the correct rotary switch, I built a second switch box.  This one has stereo logarithmic-taper potentiometers wired as voltage dividers, effectively acting as independent volume knobs on each channel.  With these volume controls, the playback levels of speaker systems with different gains can be matched, for ease of comparison.

Basic and Premium StrobeTV

Do you ever want to watch a movie at home, but can’t decide between your favorite two?  Maybe your favorite TV show is about to start, but you’re still watching a film on DVD?  Perhaps you and a friend can’t agree on which film to watch? Well, you need not fret if you’re an early adopter of StrobeTV – a new device that enables the viewing of TWO films simultaneously on a single television by simply alternating between them!  The basic version features two knobs for fine-tuning your experience.  One sets “impatience,” which is how long you’ll view and listen to one film before switching to the second film.  This can be set from once every10 seconds and mere fractions of a second! The second knob controls “preference” or the relative amount of time spent watching the first or second film – perhaps you want to view the first film 60% of the time, and the second 40%.  Or, might it be 25% first and 75% second?

If you’re the proud owner of the Premium StrobeTV, a world of customization is achievable using the eight three position switches and two knobs.  The upper row of switches configures the experience you’ll enjoy for an amount of time set by the upper knob.  When this time expires, your experience is set by the lower row of switches for the amount of time selected by the lower knob.  Naturally, the process repeats, endlessly alternating between your two chosen forms of entertainment – be that TV, DVD, Netflix, gaming consoles, etc.  Perhaps you feel you’ll miss out on important action while you’re watching one film? Premium StrobeTV allows you to listen to the left and right audio channels of the second film, while you view the image from the first film!  Maybe you’re more comfortable reserving the left speaker for playing the left channel audio for the film you’re not currently viewing?  Or maybe the audio alternates? With StrobeTV, the possibilities are virtually endless.  Premium StrobeTV has an enhanced switching range, from once per 15 seconds to over forty times per second, ensuring you won’t miss a single detail!

Premium StrobeTV features an ingenious 2 meter long  cable that allows the controls to be at your fingertips, while the wiring remains hidden away.  Note that Premium StrobeTV, like its more economical sibling, allows for the switching of four signals: right audio, composite video, left audio, and a forth signal of your choice!