Master Handbook of Acoustics

641 Pages·2006·6 MB·English

by  F. Alton Everest

THE MASTER HANDBOOK
OF ACOUSTICS
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THE MASTER HANDBOOK
OF ACOUSTICS
F. Alton Everest
FOURTH EDITION
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DOI: 10.1036/0071399747
To Bonnie Gail, whose love of art, nature, and the author
now embraces acoustics.
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C O N T E N T S
Epigraph xxi
Introduction xxiii
Chapter 1 Fundamentals of Sound 1
The Simple Sinusoid 2
Sine-Wave Language 3
Propagation of sound 5
The dance of the particles 5
How a sound wave is propagated 7
Sound in free space 9
Wavelength and Frequency 10
Complex Waves 12
Harmonics 12
Phase 12
Partials 15
Octaves 15
The concept of spectrum 17
Electrical, Mechanical, and Acoustical Analogs 20
Chapter 2 Sound Levels and the Decibel 23
Ratios vs. Differences 23
Handling numbers 25
Logarithms 26
Decibels 26
Reference Levels 28
Logarithmic and Exponential Forms Compared 30
Acoustic Power 31
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viii CONTENTS
Using Decibels 33
Example: Sound-pressure level 34
Example: Loudspeaker SPL 34
Example: Microphone specifications 35
Example: Line amplifier 35
Example: General-purpose amplifier 35
Example: Concert hall 35
Example: Combining decibels 36
Ratios and Octaves 37
Measuring Sound-Pressure Level 39
Chapter 3 The Ear and the Perception of Sound 41
Sensitivity of the Ear 41
A Primer of Ear Anatomy 42
The pinna: Directional encoder of sound 43
Directional cues: An experiment 44
The ear canal 44
The middle ear 45
The inner ear 48
Stereocilia 49
Loudness vs. Frequency 50
Loudness Control 51
Area of Audibility 53
Loudness vs. Sound-Pressure Level 54
Loudness and Bandwidth 56
Loudness of Impulses 59
Audibility of Loudness Changes 61
Pitch vs. Frequency 61
An experiment 63
Timbre vs. Spectrum 63
Localization of Sound Sources 64
Binaural Localization 67
Aural harmonics: Experiment #1 68
Aural harmonics: Experiment #2 69
The missing fundamental 69
The Ear as an Analyzer 70
The Ear as a Measuring Instrument 70
An auditory analyzer: An experiment 71
CONTENTS ix
Meters vs. the Ear 72
The Precedence Effect 73
Perception of Reflected Sound 75
Occupational and Recreational Deafness 76
Summary 79
Chapter 4 Sound Waves in the Free Field 83
Free Sound Field: Definition 83
Sound Divergence 84
Examples: Free-field sound divergence 84
Inverse square in enclosed spaces 87
Hemispherical propagation 88
Chapter 5 Speech, Music, and Noise 89
The Voice System 89
Artificial larynx 89
Sound spectrograph 90
Sound sources for speech 92
Vocal tract molding of speech 92
Formation of voiced sounds 94
Formation of unvoiced sounds 95
Putting it all together 95
Synthesized speech 96
Digital speech synthesis 97
Directionality of speech 98
Music 99
Wind instruments 101
Nonharmonic overtones 101
Dynamic range of speech and music 101
Power in Speech and Music 103
Frequency Range of Speech and Music 104
Future Dynamic-Range Requirements 104
Auditory Area 104
Noise 107
Noise—The good kind 108
Random noise 109
White and pink noise 111
Signal Distortion 112
Harmonic Distortion 114