Simulacrum

Project Brief

The simulacrum is an individually produced presentation that encapsulates a reinterpretation or innovatory development of an object. The presentation of the object should be in the form of a 90 second animation/video.

Through the lecture series you will develop an understanding of what 'object' may represent and your simulacrum will be the vessel in which you present it.Whatever your chosen object is, it's design, soundtrack, visual presentation and physical packaging of your project should all be derived from the properties held within your object and its history.

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Ideas and Skatches - The Surround Speaker

After interpreting what the brief was asking for I decided to create a surround sound speaker. I chose this because firstly I had a real object which I could draw and measure according to the real sizes of the object rather than just working from a picture. Secondly, I chose the surround sound speaker because I am interested in all things to do with music and I was interested in the history of how speakers were made. I found that the speaker itself has had a range of modifications since the very first in 1874, which affect not only its appearance but the quality of sound and the dynamics of the sound itself.

Once I looked a little into music different music sub-cultures I found something that I have experienced myself early in secondary school and ongoing throughout - an ongoing arguement over which music is better. Of course this is all down to the opinion of the listener, but I found that people were being bullied simply because they liked the sound of S Club 7. This led me to idea of a battle between two speakers, where one speaker plays one style of music and then the other plays its preffered style of music to express its opinion. When each of the speakers play they will jolt around according to the sound of the music they are playing so its almost an arguement between the two sub-cultures, one plays then the other counters. To make this relevent to the surround sound speaker I will edit each song so one plays on the right hand side and the other plays on the left. In effect this will make it sound like the speakers on the sound system the end user is listening to are battling it out too.

The Making Of Simulacrum

To begin with I started the project by making the basic shapes of the speaker. I had already made a working drawing of the original Alwa speaker so I used the dimensions from this to make sure the object was as accurately made as possible. There was no need to change the colours of the objects at this stage. All that was needed was a solid colour so that I could tell the different components apart. The base colours shown were selected by the program automatically. To change the flat plane of the cuboid objects I had to chage them into meshes. From here, I could manipulate each individual point in a shape to create the extruded surface seen in the picture to the right.

The next step was to create the high frequency speaker holders. I did this by creating two capsule shaped objects and embedding them within the first two shapes. Additionally, I created a tube shape to imitate the circular extrusion that holds the main woofer. To make the outer part of the sub woofer I used the doughnut preset shapes in 3d Studio Max and lowered the second radius setting to create a smaller circular doughnut. The cone shape of the woofer (seen to the left) is made by creating a cone, placing it in the correct position, then making a sphere object and placing it within the cone shape. All three components (doughnut, cone and sphere) were then grouped together to create the woofers final shape. After this stage I changed the basic colours to the original speaker colours and rendered the object to see the progress so far and check that the objects were positioned correctly.

After I was happy with the objects in their current state, I began to make the extrusion for the central tweeter of the speaker. To do this I created a cube object and then altered the mesh like before, but this time I projected a circular shape all the way throught the object so that the tweeter could slot nicely into the gap in the middle. This was so the when I got to the animation stage I was able to move the tweeter slightly back into the speaker without objects colliding with each other.


At this stage it was time to test the materials that I had planned to use on the object itself. Once I had tested the first few materials, my main concern wasn't the final output but more the rendering speed itself. It seemed that using the university PCs for this job was not a good idea because it took about 30 seconds to do one frame. This is the point where I decided to get myself a copy of 3d Studio Max and move all of my project files to my personal PC. I tried the program and it rendered considerably faster at about 5 seconds per frame so it was decided that I would finish the project on my own PC.

To finish off the final speaker object I made the tweeters for in side the capsules and the central holder. This was done the same way as making the woofer (as they are just smaller versions of the woofer itself, but with a different material). After I had correctly positioned all the components as seen to your right in the picture; I made the left capsule transparent in the materials editor so both surround tweeters could be seen. After one more render to check positioning I began the animation process. The moving woofer was an animation in itself within the main animation so that I didn't have to keep changin the position of the woofer every time I started a new key frame. The majority of movement by the speaker was made by changing camera angles rather than moving the object itself. To create a smooth panning camera I attached a free camera to a dummy cube object and animated the cube object on a spline so that the cube would move along it smoothly with the camera following. This also allowed me to change the camera angle easily between key frames without altering its position.

The Loudspeaker - A Brief History

All information from: http://history.sandiego.edu/

1874

Ernst W. Siemens:
The first to describe the "dynamic" or moving-coil transducer, with a circular coil of wire in a magnetic field and supported so that it could move axially. Initially the device was not used for producing sound untill 1877 when the diaphragm could take the form of a cone, with an exponentially flaring "morning glory" * form. This is the first patent for the loudspeaker horn that would be used on most phonographs players in the acoustic era.

*Morning Glory - A trumpet shaped flower that opens in the morning. See Here

1898

Oliver Lodge:
Invented the improved loudspeaker with nonmagnetic spacers to keep the air gap between the inner and outer poles of a moving coil transducer. A model of his loudspeaker is in the British Science Museum in South Kensington.

1901

John Stroh:
First described the conical paper diaphragm that terminated at the rim of the speaker in a section that was flat except for corrugations.

1908

Anton Pollak:
Improved the moving-coil loudspeaker with a voice-coil centering spider.

1911

Edwin S. Pridham and Peter L. Jensen:
Invented a moving-coil loudspeaker in Napa, California, which they called the "Magnavox". This was used by Woodrow Wilson in San Diego in 1919.

1915

Harold Arnold:
Began program at Bell Labs to improve phonographic sound recording. The first priority was the electronic amplifier using the new vacuum tube, second was the microphone, and third was the loudspeaker that would improve the "balanced armature" units developed for public address. After WWI, J. P. Maxfield led this project that produced E. C. Wente's moving coil speaker by 1925, the Orthophonic phonographic player by 1925, and Vitaphone talking motion pictures by 1926.

1918

Henry Egerton:
Balanced-armature loudspeaker, used in the Bell Labs No. 540AW speakers developed by N. H. Ricker Oct. 6, 1922, that became the 540 commercial speaker by 1924; was based on the balanced armature telephone patent of Thomas Watson , similar to devices also developed by Siemens and Frank Capps.

1920

Grebe radio receiver and 1924 Western Electric 540 speaker.

1921

The Phonetron based on C. L. Farrand's earlier filed patent. This was the first coil-driven direct-radiator loudspeaker to be sold in the U.S. and was very popular, competing with the horns used by table radios.

1923

The Thorophone was a gooseneck loudspeaker with a voice-coil driver.

1924

Chester W. Rice and Edward W. Kellogg:
Their research paper at General Electric was important in establishing the basic principle of the direct-radiator loudspeaker with a small coil-driven mass-controlled diaphragm in a baffle with a broad midfrequency range of uniform response.
Edward Wente:
At Bell Labs had independently discovered this same principle. The Rice-Kellogg paper also published an amplifier design that was important in boosting the power transmitted to loudspeakers. In 1926, RCA used this design in the Radiola line of a.c. powered radios.

1925

Victor Orthophonic:
Acoustic phonograph player had a folded exponential horn that was later used as model for the Klipsch speaker of the hi-fi era. Within a year, the Orthophonic faced competition from all-electric phonographs with an electromechanical pickup, vacuum-tube amplifier, and moving-coil loudspeaker, such as the Brunswick Panatrope sold by the Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company.

1926

Vitaphone sound system for motion pictures used a new speaker developed at Bell Labs. Wente and Thuras designed the Western Electric 555-W speaker driver that was coupled with a horn having a 1-in. throat and a 40-sq. ft. mouth; it was capable of 100-5000 hz freq. range with an efficiency of 25% (compared to 1% today) needed due to low amp power of 10 watts. The power amps were 205-D. Older loudspeakers were balanced armature type, but the newer 555-W speakers of the Vitaphone were moving coil type.

1928

Herman J. Fanger:
Coaxial speaker, composed of a small high frequency horn with its own diaphragm nested inside or in front of a large cone loudspeaker, based on the variable-area principle that made the center cone light and stiff for high frequencies and the outer cone flexible and highly damped for lower frequencies.

1929

E. W. Kellogg:
Electrostatic speaker composed of many small sections able to radiate sound with out magnets or cones or baffles. Influenced Peter Walker to build the Quad ESL flat panel speaker in 1957.

1929

J. D. Seabert of Westinghouse:
Developed a horn-type loudspeaker that directed the sounds of human speech toward the audience better than cone speakers that were intended for the over-all sound including music to fill the entire theater. These "directional baffle" horns had an opening 3 ft. by 4 ft. and were different from small-throat horns.

1930

Albert L. Thuras:
Bass-reflex principle while working at Bell Labs. Early cabinets used a passive baffle to direct sound to the front, allowing the back of the cabinet to be open for the low sounds. The bass-reflex enclosure kept the low-frequency sounds from being lost from the rear of the diaphragm.

1931

Bell Labs:
Developed the two-way loudspeaker, called "divided range" for the demonstration by H. A. Frederick in December of vertically cut records. The high frequencies were reproduced by a small horn with a frequency response of 3000-13,000 hz, and the low frequencies by a 12-inch dynamic cone direct-radiator unit with a frequency response within 5db from 50-10,000 hz. By 1933, a triple-range speaker had been developed for the Constitution Hall demo in April, adding Western Electric No. 555 driver units as the mid-range speaker. For the low frequency range 40-300 hz, a large moving coil-driven cone diaphragm in a large baffle expanding from a 12-in throat to a 60-inch mouth over a total length of 10 ft. This 3-way system was introduced in motion picture theaters as "Wide Range" reproduction.

1932

RCA:
Demonstrated a dual-range speaker of its own design for theaters, using three 6-inch cone diaphragms with aluminum voice coils in divergent directions, with a response of 125-8000 hz, and 10-ft. horns 40-125 hz.

1933

Bell Labs, 1953:
"Progress was such that a demonstration of the new system - called "stereophonic" because of its ability to give a spatial sense corresponding to stereoscopic vision - was given before the National Academy of Sciences and many invited guests at Constitution Hall, Washington in the spring of 1933. Transmission was over wire lines from the Academy of Music in Philadelphia and three channels were used with microphones respectively at left, center and right of the orchestra stage and loud speakers in similar positions in Constitution Hall." This transmission of music "was carried out with special loud speakers developed for the purpose by Dr. Wente and the late A. L. Thuras. The objectives in the design of these loudspeakers were uniform response over the whole tonal range of the orchestra, an enhanced sound power output capacity without noticeable non-linear distortion and uniform distribution of the emitted sound at all frequencies throughout a wide solid angle. For the receiving unit and the multicellular horn which were developed for this demonstration, Dr. Wente, jointly with the Bell Telephone Laboratories, was awarded a gold plaque by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1936."

1935

Douglas Shearer and John Hilliard at MGM:
Developed a standard theater speaker system, starting with the Loews 5000-seat Capitol Theater on Broadway. James Lansing and Dr. John F. Blackburn of Cal Tech designed a 2-way speaker system; the high frequency driver had a 3-inch aluminum diaphragm and throat size of 1.4 inches; the low frequency baffled cone unit was 15 inches. ERPI provided speakers from Fletcher's hi-fi experimental equipment to help design the speakers. The low frequency horn used four 15-in. Lansing cone drivers and Lansing 284 drivers for multicell horns of different sizes. The system was installed in 12 theaters for the opening of "Romeo and Juliet" with Norma Shearer, sister of Douglas, then installed in all Loews Theaters, then became the standard established by the Academy.

1940

Paul W. Klipsch:
Corner horn speaker.

1949

W. E. Kock and F. K. Harvey:
Bell Labs developed the acoustical lens, and reported findings in 1949 JAES. These lenses are used in James B. Lansing theater speakers and home hi-fi speakers.

1953

Arthur Janszen:
Electrostatic high-frequency speaker.

1954

Edgar Villchur:
Acoustic Research introduced the small AR-1 bookshelf loudspeaker that used the acoustic suspension principle. This was soon followed by the $89 AR-2 and by the AR-3 with improved domed tweeters in 1958.

1957

Peter Walker and David Williamson:
Designers of the Quad ESL marketed as the first full-range electrostatic loudspeaker.

1982

George Lucas and Tomlinson Holman:
Designers of the THX sound system first exhibited on The Return of the Jedi; THX "is comprised of customized acoustical design work for each auditorium, a special screen speaker installation method, a proprietary electronic crossover network, and rigorous audio equipment specifications and performance standards."

1996

The Verity Group:
In Britain, formed New Transducers Ltd, now known as the NXT company , to develop the Distributed-Mode Loudspeaker (DML) based on the 1991 patent by Dr Ken Heron of Britain's Defence Evaluation & Research Agency (DERA).

1998

Benwin marketed the first DML flat panel loudspeakers.

Sources

• Augspurger, George L. "Theory, Ingenuity, and Wizadry in Speaker Design," Audio, April 1987 p. 51-55, originally published in Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 77, No. 4, April 1985, p. 1303-1308, describes five milestone loudspeaker designs over the last 50 years: Rice-Kellogg 1925, Altec Lansing Model 604 duplex 1943, Klipsch corner horn 1946, Jensen bass reflex in the 1940s that was an early version of the vented box enclosure defined by Thiele-Small 1961, and Villchur acoustic suspension 1954.
• Douglas, Alan. Radio Manufacturers of the 1920's. Vestal Press Ltd, 1989.
• Hunt, Frederick V. Electroacoustics: the Analysis of Transduction, and its Historical Background. New York: American Institute of Physics for the Acoustical Society of America, 1982.
• Olson, Harry Ferdinand. Acoustical Engineering. Princeton, N.J.: Van Nostrand,1957.
• Rice, Chester W. and Edward W. Kellogg, "Notes on the Development of a New Type of Hornless Loudspeaker," Transactions of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers 44, 1925, p. 461-475.
• "Edward C. Wente" biography manuscript, Bell Telephone Laboratories, Sept. 17, 1953, Box 228-07-01, AT&T Archives, Warren, NJ.
• Rice, Chester W. and Edward W. Kellogg, "Notes on the Development of a New Type of Hornless Loudspeaker," Transactions of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers 44, 1925, p. 461-475.