Loudspeakers

While ‘line source’ loudspeakers can offer some advantages in their control over horizontal directivity, and the opportunity to replace one large, high excursion driver with many smaller units operating in a potentially more linear fashion, measuring these long, thin drivers is less straightforward. Only by testing the response of a long line source at significant distance is its fully integrated performance realised, but this is compromised by first reflections from walls and other boundaries getting into the mix.

Above: The S 530’s Mag850 high-frequency driver

Testing the S 530 at the standard 1m is still in the ‘nearfield’ for a line source (anything up to 2.5m distance is nearfield for an 85cm line driver), so cancellation/reinforcement of soundwaves arriving from different sections of the strip are at least partially responsible for the decline in output over the decade from 300Hz to 3.15kHz and notches and peaks at higher frequency [see PM's Lab Report, Graph 1] The S 530’s response looks to be ‘flatter’ at a 3-4m listening distance. PM