Modeling Characteristics of Real Loudspeakers Using Various Acoustic Models: Modal-domain Approaches

The accuracy and perception of soundfields produced by loudspeaker arrays are strongly influenced by the inherent characteristics of the commercial loudspeakers. This paper analyzes such characteristics of loudspeakers by deriving equivalent theoretical models, and by studying their impact on soundfield reproduction. A number of acoustic models are investigated, including plane waves decomposition, point source decomposition and mixed source decomposition. Each proposed model employs three effective sparse decomposition algorithms for optimized solutions, including iteratively reweighted least squares (IRLS), matching pursuit (MP) and least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO). A successful model shall enable the prediction of the soundfield outside the original recording region. Therefore, we validate the effectiveness of the models by comparing the simulated soundfield with secondary measurements obtained beyond the original area. Experimental results have confirmed that both the plane wave and mixed source model achieve promising performance with respect to the proposed metrics.