AcousticalEngineer | Acoustical Engineer

Dynamic Microphones: Are They Right for Me?

Microphones are categorized by the way they transform sound energy into electrical energy. In acoustics terms, the process of changing energy from one type to another is called transduction. In this article we will explore the way a dynamic microphone transducer works and what that might mean for choosing the right microphone for your next project.

How Do They Work?

Some confusion about dynamic microphones exists because of the word dynamic. When dynamic is used to describe microphones, it is not referencing ...

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8
AUG
2019

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Condenser Microphones: Are They Right for Me?

Posted by: AcousticalEngineer

Microphones are a subset of a larger group of devices called transducers, which convert energy from one form to another. In this article, we will take a closer look at condenser microphones to learn how they change acoustic energy to electric energy.

How Do They Work?

You are probably most familiar with the housing of a microphone. It’s the hard outer casing part of the microphone that you can see. It often has a wire frame mesh to protect the inner workings ...

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5
AUG
2019

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The Quietest Place on Earth: The Anechoic Chamber

Posted by: AcousticalEngineer

There are few places on earth where you can experience complete darkness. These places include the depths of the ocean, caves, and mines. Even in these places, however, there is sound. Complete silence does not happen naturally. In order to have complete silence, you need a special type of room called an anechoic chamber.

The word anechoic (meaning “no echo”) was derived from Greek by acoustics expert Leo Beranek. Special measures must be considered when designing an echo-free room. As much ...

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AUG
2019

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Laser Hearing: The Cocktail Party Effect

Posted by: AcousticalEngineer

The cocktail party effect is the ability to listen selectively despite a noisy environment. The term comes from the observation that even in a crowded cocktail party room, a person can carry on a conversation with one person by “tuning in” to them and “tuning out” everything else.

If you think about it, it’s amazing that we can direct our focus to parse a desired noise source—say, a television—over the voice of the person sitting next to you. Of course, it ...

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29
JUL
2019

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Superpowers of the Ear: The Inner Ear

Posted by: AcousticalEngineer

While both the outer ear and middle ear (which were discussed previously) are amazing and complex, the inner ear is perhaps the most amazing and most complex. While the world of the outer ear and middle ear are full of air, the world of the inner ear is filled with watery fluids. So, are you ready to take a plunge into the aquatic world of the inner ear?

For the sake of simplicity today, we will divide the inner ...

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25
JUL
2019

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acoustics, balance, basilar membrane, cochlea, ear hair, education, engineering, hair, hear, hearing, inner ear, learn, listening, science, semicircular, sound, spiral, transducer

Superpowers of the Ear: The Middle Ear

Posted by: AcousticalEngineer

In a previous article we learned about the superpowers of the outer ear and promised we would tell you more about the middle ear, as well as that little drumhead at the end of your ear canal—the tympanic membrane.

The middle ear is a pocket of air bounded by the ear drum on the outer side and the cochlea on the inner side. The middle ear is home to the three smallest named bones in the human body: the malleus, ...

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22
JUL
2019

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Superpowers of the Ear: The Outer Ear

Posted by: AcousticalEngineer

You may have heard people talk about the ear in three parts: the outer ear, the middle ear, and the inner ear. But have you ever wondered why there are three parts in the first place? Why not just attach a nerve to the eardrum and call it good? The answers to these questions might surprise you.

While each part of the ear has an important function, in this post we are going to explore the superpowers of the outer ear.

The ...

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18
JUL
2019

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acoustics, audiologist, ear, ear canal, ear drum, education, fundamental frequency, health, learn, outer ear, pinna, science, science of hearing, tube

Only Hearing Trains at Night? No, You’re not Crazy

Posted by: AcousticalEngineer

Believe it or not, it is common for people who live far from railroad tracks to hear trains at night and only at night. While this may be due to trains only running in the evening or due to lower overall sound levels in the nighttime, there is a surprising physical explanation why a person might hear a train in the nighttime and not in the day.

Sound waves, like other types of waves, experience bending or refraction when ...

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15
JUL
2019

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Anatomy of a Sound Wave

Posted by: AcousticalEngineer

When most people hear the word wave, they immediately think of ocean waves. While there’s nothing wrong about thinking about a sunny day at the beach, in terms of acoustics, the kind of waves you see crashing on the sand are not like most sound waves. In fact, crashing ocean waves are like the complicated nonlinear waves you find in a sonic boom situation.

Sonic booms may be cool, but if you want to understand sound waves, it’s best to start ...

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11
JUL
2019

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What is a Decibel? — Logarithms & Math

Posted by: AcousticalEngineer

In the previous post, we learned that the decibels belongs to a group of units called a relative units. This means that decibels are always expressed as a ratio of a measured value to a known reference value. There is, of course, a bit more to decibels than dividing one number by another, but don’t worry—the math isn’t too bad. We’ll walk you through it nice and slow.

So, why bother with more math in the first place? Shouldn’t it ...

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8
JUL
2019

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