Here’s a fascinating speaker:

It uses many transducers arranged in a specific curve, driven in parallel and with ‘shading’ i.e. graduated volume settings along the curve, to reduce vertical dispersion but maintain wide dispersion in the horizontal. I can see how this might appear quite appealing for use in a non-ideal room with low ceilings or whatever.

It is a variation on the phased array concept, where the outputs of many transducers combine to produce a directional beam. It is effectively relying on differing path lengths from the different transducers producing phase cancellation or reinforcement in the air at different angles as you move off axis. All the individual wavefronts sum correctly at the listener’s ear to reproduce the signal accurately.

At a smaller scale, a single transducer of finite size can be thought of as many small transducers being driven simultaneously. At high frequencies (as the wavelengths being reproduced become short compared to the diameter of the transducer) differing path lengths from various parts of the transducer combine in the air to cause phase cancellation as you move off axis. This is known as beaming and is usually controlled in speaker design by using drivers of the appropriate size for the frequencies they are reproducing. Changes in directivity with frequency are regarded as undesirable in speaker design, because although the on-axis measurements can be perfect, the ‘room sound’ (reverberation) has the ‘wrong’ frequency response.

A large panel speaker suffers from beaming in the extreme, but with Quad electrostatics Peter Walker introduced a clever trick, where phase is shifted selectively using concentric circular electrodes as you move outwards from the centre of the panel. At the listener’s position, this simulates the effect of a point source emanating from some distance behind the panel, increasing the size of the ‘sweet spot’ and effectively reducing the high frequency beaming.

There are other ways of harnessing the power of phase cancellation and summation. Dipole speakers’ lower frequencies cancel out at the sides (and top and bottom) as the antiphase rear pressure waves meet those from the front. This is supposed to be useful acoustically, cutting down on unwanted reflections from floor, walls and ceiling. A dipole speaker may be realised by mounting a single driver on a panel of wood with a hole in it, but it behaves effectively as two transducers, one of which is in anti-phase to the other. Some people say they prefer the sound of such speakers over conventional box speakers.

This all works well in terms of the direct sound reaching the listener and, as in the CBT speaker above, may provide a very uniform dispersion with frequency compared to conventional speakers. But beyond the measurements of the direct sound, does the reverberation sound quite ‘right’? What if the overall level of reverberation doesn’t approximate the ‘liveness’ of the room that the listeners notice as they talk or shuffle their feet? If the vertical reflections are reduced but not the horizontal, does this sound unnatural?

Characterising a room from its sound

The interaction of a room and an acoustic source could be thought of as a collection of simultaneous equations – acoustics can be modelled and simulated for computer games, and it is possible for a computer to do the reverse and work out the size and shape of the room from the sound. If the acoustic source is, in fact, multiple sources separated by certain distances, the computer can work that out, too.

Does the human hearing system do something similar? I would say “probably”. A human can work quite a lot out about a room from just its sound – you would certainly know whether you were in an anechoic chamber, a normal room or a cathedral. Even in a strange environment, a human rarely mistakes the direction and distance from which sound is coming. Head movements may play a part.

And this is where listening to a ‘distributed speaker’ in a room becomes a bit strange.

Stereo speakers can be regarded as a ‘distributed speaker’ when playing a centrally-placed sound. This is unavoidable – if we are using stereo as our system. Beyond that, what is the effect of spreading each speaker itself out, or deliberately creating phased ‘beams’ of sound?

Even though the combination of direct sounds adds up to the familiar sound at the listener’s position as though emanating from its original source, there is information within the reflections that is telling the listener that the acoustic source is really a radically different shape. Reverberation levels and directions may be ‘asymmetric’ with the apparent direct sound.

In effect, the direct sound says we are listening to this:

but the reverberation says it is something different.

Might there be audible side effects from this? In the case of the dipole speaker, for example, the rear (antiphase) signal reflects off the back wall and some of it does make its way forwards to the listener. In my experience, this comes through as a certain ‘phasiness’ but it doesn’t seem to bother other people.

From a normal listening distance, most musical sources are small and appear close to being a ‘point source’. If we are going to add some more reverberation, should it not appear to be emanating as much as possible from a point source?

It is easy to say that reverberation is so complex that it is just a wash of ‘ambience’ and nothing more; all we need to do is give it the right ‘colour’ i.e. frequency response. And one of the reasons for using a ‘distributed speaker’ may be to reduce the amount of reverberation anyway. But I don’t think we should overdo it: we surely want to listen in real rooms because of the reverberation, not despite it. What is the most side effect-free way to introduce this reverberation?

Clearly, some rooms are not ideal and offer too much of the wrong sort of reverberation. Maybe a ‘distributed speaker’ offers a solution, but is it as good as a conventional speaker in a suitable room? And is it really necessary, anyway? I think some people may be misguidedly attempting to achieve ‘perfect’ measurements by, effectively, eliminating the room from the sound even though their room is perfectly fine. How many people are intrigued by the CBT speaker above simply because it offers ‘better’ conventional in-room measurements, regardless of whether it is necessary?

Conclusion

‘Distributed speakers’ that use large, or multiple, transducers may achieve what they set out to do superficially, but are they free of side-effects?

I don’t have scientific proof, but I remain convinced that the ‘Rolls Royce’ of listening remains ‘point source’ monopole speakers in a large, carpeted, furnished room with a high ceiling. Box speakers with multiple drivers of different sizes are small and can be regarded as being very close to a single transducer, but are not so omnidirectional that they create too much reverberation. The acoustic ‘throw’ they produce is fairly ‘natural’. In other words, for stereo perfection, I think there is still a good chance that the types of rooms and speakers people were listening to in the 1970s remain optimal.

[Last edited 17.30 BST 09/05/17]