Acoustics

An Application of Coupled Media in Acoustic Filters

Figs. 1 - 3 were all from a research paper entitled New Type of Acoustics Filter Using Periodic Polymer Layers for Measuring Audio Signal Components Excited by Amplitude-Modulated High_Intensity Ultrasonic Wavessubmitted to the Audio Engineering Society (AES) by Minoru Todo, Primary Innovator at Measurement Specialties, Inc., in the October 2005 edition of the AES Journal. Figs. 4 and 5 below, also from this paper, are illustrations of test setups referred to in this paper. Specifically, Fig. 4 is a test setup used to measure the transmission (of an incident ultrasonic sound wave) through the acoustic filter described by Figs. 1 and 2. Fig. 5 is a block diagram of the test setup used for measuring radiation pressure, one of the audio effects mentioned in the previous section. It turns out that out of all of the audio effects mentioned in the previous section that are caused by high-intensity ultrasonic waves propagating in a medium, sound waves produced from radiated pressure are the hardest to detect when microphones and preamplifiers are used in the detection/receiver system. Although nonlinear noise artifacts occur due to overloading of the preamplifier present in the detection/receiver system, the bulk of the nonlinear noise comes from the inherent nonlinear noise properties of microphones. This is true because all microphones, even specialized measurement microphones designed for audio spectrum measurements that have sensitivity well beyond the threshold of hearing, have nonlinearities artifacts that (periodically) increase in magnitude with respect to increase at ultrasonic frequencies. These nonlinearities essentially mask the radiation pressure generated because the magnitude of these nonlinearities are orders of magnitude greater than the radiation pressure. The acoustic (low-pass) filter referred to in this paper was designed in order to filter out the "detrimental" ultrasonic wave that was inducing high nonlinear noise artifacts in the measurement microphones. The high-intensity, ultrasonic wave was producing radiation pressure (which is audible) within the initial acoustic medium (i.e. air). By filtering out the ultrasonic wave, the measurement microphone would only detect the audible radiation pressure that the ultrasonic wave was producing in air. Acoustic filters like these could possibly be used to detect/receive any high-intensity, ultrasonic signal that may carry audio information which may need to be extrapolated with an acceptable level of fidelity.