Wavefront Sculpture Technology - R+R Sonicdesign AG

URBAN ET AL. ENGINEERING REPORTS
ation of border distance and far-field coverage angle with
frequency for a flat, continuous line source of 5.4-m
height. For this example, the near field extends as far as
88 m at 2 kHz.
It should be noted that different authors have proposed
various expressions for the border distance:
•d B � 3H Smith [3]
•d B � H/π Rathe [4]
•d B � max (H, λ/6) Beranek [5]
Most of these expressions omit the frequency dependence
and are incorrect with regard to the size dependence.
It was also demonstrated in [1] that a line array of
sources, each radiating a flat isophase wavefront, will produce
secondary lobes not greater than �13.5 dB with
respect to the main lobe in the far field and SPL variations
not greater than �3 dB within the near-field region, provided
that:
• Either the sum of the flat, individual radiating areas
covers more than 80% of the vertical frame of the array,
that is, the target radiating area, 2 or
•The spacing between the acoustic centers of individual
sound sources is smaller than 1/6F that is, λ/2, given the
approximation that λ � 1/3F, where λ is the wavelength
in meters and F is the frequency in kHz.
These two requirements form the basis of WST criteria
which, in turn, define conditions for the effective coupling
of multiple sound sources. In the following sections these
results are derived using the Fresnel approach along with
2 A derivation of how flat the individual radiated wavefronts
must be is given in Section 3.3.
A
B
Third zone
Second zone
First zone
Front view Side view
further results concerning the prediction of line source
array behavior.
2 FRESNEL APPROACH FOR A CONTINUOUS
LINE SOURCE
The fact that light is a wave implies interference phenomena
when an isophasic and extended light source is
looked at from a given observation point. These interference
patterns are not easy to predict, but in 1819 Fresnel
described a way to visualize these patterns semiquantitatively.
Fresnel’s approach was to partition the main light
source into fictitious zones made up of elementary light
sources. The zones are classified according to their arrival
time differences to the observer in such a way that the first
zone appears in phase to the observer (within a fraction of
the wavelength λ). The next zone consists of elementary
sources that are in phase at the observer position, but are
collectively in phase opposition with respect to the first
zone, and so on. A more precise analysis shows that the
fraction of wavelength is λ/2 for a two-dimensional source
and λ/2.7 for a one-dimensional source. (See Appendix 2
for further details.)
In the following, Fresnel’s concepts are applied in analyzing
the sound field of extended sources. In order to
characterize the wavefield for a flat, continuous, isophasic
line source at a given observation point, spheres are drawn
centered on the listener position with radii that are incremented
by steps of λ/2 (see Figs. 3 and 4). The first radius
equals the tangential distance that separates the line source
and the observation point. With reference to Figs. 3 and 4,
two cases can be observed.
1) A dominant zone appears. The outer zones are alternatively
in phase and out of phase. Their size is approximately
equal and they cancel each other. Therefore the
Fig. 3. Observer facing line source. Circles are drawn centered on observer O, with radii increasing by steps of λ/2 (side view). Fresnel
zones are defined by the pattern of intersections on source AB (front view).
914 J. Audio Eng. Soc., Vol. 51, No. 10, 2003 October
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