Tech Briefs Magazine - October 2021 - 5a

SIMULATION-BASED PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
FIGURE 2     
     
firing speaker
design to radiate
sound upward
to reflect off the
ceiling, as shown in
Figure 1. Perceptual
filtering is applied
to these speakers
to amplify their
sense of elevation,
allowing consumers
to perceive the
location of sound
origination as the
point of reflection in
the ceiling and not
the physical speaker
location. " If you
have traditional TV
speakers, you will
hear the speaker's
sound emitting right
in front of you from
the TV. With Dolby
In 2014, Dolby Laboratories introduced
Dolby Atmos®
enabled speaker (DAES)
technology for home theater systems
and later expanded this technology
for soundbar products. Now they are
developing DAES technology for TVs to
push the boundaries of what is possible for
immersive home audio technology.
» THE SCIENCE OF DOLBY
ATMOS®
ENABLED SPEAKERS
To reproduce realistic overhead sound,
DAES technology employs an upwardenabled
TV speakers, you will
hear overhead sound coming from the
ceiling, " said Lakshmikanth Tipparaju,
a senior acoustic system and transducer
engineer at Dolby Laboratories.
Atmos®
» DESIGN CHALLENGES FOR
ULTRATHIN TV SPEAKERS
If you frequently peruse the latest
consumer electronics, you might have
noticed that TVs get sleeker and thinner
every year. Slim form factor TV design
constraints make it difficult to design
DAES for TVs. Why? As TV designs are
TV speakers that are able to provide
large sweet spot coverage around the
typical position of a listener is a key
challenge, according to Tipparaju. " A
sweet spot coverage area is the region
where we can consistently perceive
height channel image on the ceiling.
The ceiling image is compromised when
we move away from the sweet spot
coverage area, " said Tipparaju.
In order to design a DAES that is both
thin enough to be built into modern
televisions and provides large sweet spot
coverage, Dolby Laboratories turned to
acoustics simulation. Tipparaju believes a
key benefit of simulation technology is that
it allows him to evaluate the performance
of new speaker designs prior to building
and testing an actual physical prototype -
saving valuable time and resources.
» ACOUSTICAL FEM
AND BEM ANALYSES
Using acoustics modeling in the COMSOL
Multiphysics®
simulation software,
Tipparaju explored several different
upward-firing speaker design concepts for
optimizing the sweet spot coverage.
" Initially, we built a speaker that
was 2 inches thick, " said Tipparaju. (A
typical soundbar is about 5 inches, or
made more compact, the shape and area
available for the upward-firing speaker
diaphragm, which is closely coupled to a
boundary surface, becomes more restricted
by the thickness of the TV, resulting in a
narrow height channel ceiling image.
Designing slim Dolby Atmos®
enabled
FIGURE 3            
             
               
COMSOL NEWS 5a
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Tech Briefs Magazine - October 2021

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