Index

Diffraction of Sound Traveling

wave
concepts
Diffraction: the bending of waves around small* obstacles
and the spreading out of waves beyond small* openings. Sound
propagation
* small compared to the wavelength concepts

Important parts of our experience with sound involve diffraction. The fact that you can hear
sounds around corners and around barriers involves both diffraction and reflection of
sound. Diffraction in such cases helps the sound to "bend around" the obstacles. The fact
that diffraction is more pronounced with longer wavelengths implies that you can hear low
frequencies around obstacles better than high frequencies, as illustrated by the example of
amarching band on the street. Another common example of diffraction is the contrast in
sound from a close lightning strike and a distant one. The thunder from a close bolt of
lightning will be experienced as a sharp crack, indicating the presence of a lot of high
frequency sound. The thunder from a distant strike will be experienced as a low rumble
since it is the long wavelengths which can bend around obstacles to get to you. There are
other factors such as the higher air absorption of high frequencies involved, but diffraction
plays a part in the experience.

You may perceive diffraction to have a dual nature, since the same phenomenon which
causes waves to bend around obstacles causes them to spread out past small openings. This
aspect of diffraction also has many implications. Besides being able to hear the sound when
you are outside the door as in the illustration above, this spreading out of sound waves has
consequences when you are trying to soundproof a room. Good soundproofing requires that
a room be well sealed, because any openings will allow sound from the outside to spread
out in the room - it is surprising how much sound can get in through a small opening. Good
sealing of loudspeaker cabinets is required for similar reasons.

Another implication of diffraction is the fact that a wave which is much longer than the size
of an obstacle, like the post in the auditorium above, cannot give you information about that
obstacle. A fundamental principle of imaging is that you cannot see an object which is
smaller than the wavelength of the wave with which you view it. You cannot see a virus
with a light microscope because the virus is smaller than the wavelength of visible light.
The reason for that limitation can be visualized with the auditorium example: the sound
waves bend in and reconstruct the wavefront past the post. When you are several sound
wavelengths past the post, nothing about the wave gives you information about the post. So
your experience with sound can give you insights into the limitations of all kinds of
imaging processes.

Other examples:
Marching band Small loudspeakers
Diffraction of light

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 Index

Traveling
wave
concepts

Sound
propagation
concepts

The long wavelength sounds of the bass drum will diffract around the corner more
efficiently than the more directional, short wavelength sounds of the higher pitched
instruments.

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 Loudspeaker Sound Contours
One consequence of diffraction is
that sound from a loudspeaker will
spread out rather than just going
straight ahead. Since the bass
frequencies have longer
wavelengths compared to the size of
the loudspeaker, they will spread
out more than the high frequencies.
The curves at left represent
equal intensity contours at
90 decibels for sound produced by a
small enclosed loudspeaker. It is
evident that the high frequency
sound spreads out less than the low
Index
frequency sound.
Traveling
These equal intensity curves were
wave
measured in an undergraduate
concepts
sound laboratory experiment.
Sound
propagation
Note that the wavelength of the 100 Hz sound is about 3.45 meters, much larger than the concepts
speaker, while that of the 2000 Hz sound is about 18 cm, about the size of the speaker.

The realities of diffraction may affect your choice of loudspeakers for your personal
listening. Very small loudspeakers are often promoted as having sound just as good as a
large loudspeaker. There is reason to be skeptical about such claims on physical grounds.
Large speakers are inherently more efficient in producing bass frequencies into a room just
because their size compares more favorably with the wavelengths of those sounds. Even if
that basic problem is overcome by electronic equalization of the sound input to the speakers
and the design of the crossover networks which provide the signal to the
differentcomponents of the loudspeaker, there is no escaping the implications of diffraction.
Small loudspeakers will spread the bass frequencies considerably more than the high
frequencies. This difference between the equal-loudness patterns of highs and lows
becomes more and more pronounced as you produce smaller and smaller speakers. So you
might conceivably get equivalent sound directly on-axis with the speaker, but as you move
away from the axis, the high frequencies will drop off more rapidly than the lows.
Practically, this limits the audience region for optimal listening. It might be fairly said that
if the speakers are just for you, you might be satisfied with the small speakers because you
can position yourself at the ideal-listener location. But if you have guests, they will not be
as satisfied because of the greater off-axis variations from the small speakers.
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Diffraction Grating
What happens when we increase the number of slits in Young's experiment? In that
case we create something called a diffraction grating. Again, we can think of the
diffraction grating as being the same as a set of sound sources which are
all coherent with each other. We now have a case where there are many more than
just two sources interfering. The simulation below shows the sound field generated
by a set of sources. Do we just get a chaotic mess? Are there still quiet and loud
patches - 'Young's fringes'?

We don't just end up with a chaotic mess - because the sound sources are coherent.
So we still get 'loud spots' where the sound from the slits arrives in-phase, and 'quiet
spots' where the sound from the slits cancels due to destructive interference. As with
Young's double slits, the directions of the fringes can be calculated. Note however
that once we get to a reasonable distance from the grating, towards the right of the
simulation window, the waves from each slit have added back up into a large plane
wave by Huygen's principle.

In acoustics, the most common example of many sources side by side is a column
loudspeaker. These are the tall narrow speakers that you may have seen used for
speech reinforcement in your school or church. Here the designer makes use of the
interference pattern to ensure that sound spreads out broadly in the horizontal
plane, but forms quite a tight 'beam' in the vertical plane. This only works when the
column in placed vertically, and means that the sound is well-distributed around the
audience but does not radiate into the roof space of high buildings (especially sports
halls, churches and railway stations etc) and 'bounce around' causing too much
reverberation.
In large PA systems for outdoor gigs, a similar arrangement is popular. Modular
speaker boxes are sat one on top of another in a tall 'pile', or hung from a
suspending gantry. This is called a 'line array', and follows the same idea. The sound
is directed broadly in the plane of the audience's heads - but forms a tight 'beam' in
the vertical plane. This means that if the line array angled slightly towards the
ground, the audience can enjoy high-volume music - but that the spread of this
music to surrounding houses etc is controlled by the line array direcitivity. Trying to
control noise 'pollution' is one of the major problems you have to overcome if you
want to run a music festival...unless you can persuade your audience to travel
somewhere really remote, you risk annoying the neighbours, an without proper
acoustic design that can get you shut down.

Acoustic Room Design

Let's come back 'indoors' and think about the many different types of buildings which
need to have special acoustic design. In concert halls, recording studios for music,
TV and radio, and even class-rooms we need to control the amount of sound
reflected from the walls, floor and ceiling. These reflections disturb the original
sound and cause unwanted echoes and reverberation. In concert halls and class-
rooms these echoes mean that the original sound can become 'difficult to hear
properly' - there can be poor intelligibility. (You may suspect some of your teachers
suffer from this at the best of times, but too much rverberation can only make things
worse!).

Try this experiment - go into a small bare room (like a toilet, unless you have luxury
furry wallpaper and a deep-pile carpet...) and make noise - a handclap will do.
The direct sound arriving at your ears directly from your hands is quickly followed by
reflections from the walls, ceiling and floor. These reflections can cause the sound to
be 'coloured', or to put it another way, the timbre of the sound will change. (Timbre is
a French word which describes sound 'quality', and is pronounced 'tambruh', not
'timber'! The German equivalent is useful too - 'klangfarbe' or literally, 'tone-colour'.)
In extreme cases reflections can also cause the sound image to appear to come
from the 'wrong' direction.

The diagram below shows a plan view of a small rectangular room, highlighting
a first order (involving only one reflecting surface) reflection from the top wall in red.
In small rooms, first order reflections tend to be loud and arrive very soon after the
direct sound. You can imagine the waves bouncing around like balls on a pool table -
second order reflections are like shots played off two cushions, third order off three
etc etc. The higher-order the reflection, the further the wave has travelled and the
later they arrive. These later reflections all blend in together, and cause
reverberation.

There are two basic forms of acoustic treatment to deal with reflections,
namely absorption and diffusion.

Absorption
One solution to reflections is to apply absorption to the wall, which turns acoustic
energy into heat - this is a kind ofdamping. This absorption can be a specialist
product such as those made of mineral wool, open cell foam, or recycled fibrous
material like paper-waste, but absorption can also be provided by more
commonplace object such as curtains, sofas or carpets. It can be a tricky balance for
an acoustic designer - too much absorption, and the room will sound 'dead'. The
sound quality would be like listening outdoors, where only the direct sound from a
source is heard (assuming 'soft' ground and an absence of nearby buildings). While
a few people favour such acoustic 'non-environments' for mixing music, for most
people these are rather oppressive spaces too far removed from normal listening
conditions.

So - what other tricks can the acoustic desgner use?

Diffusion
Acoustic Diffusers are used to disperse reflections spatially - to 'spread out' reflected
sound energy over a wide range of angles - as shown in the diagram above. Some
diffusion can be obtained by carefully placing book cases and other furniture in a
room, but often specialist (=expensive!) diffusing surfaces can achieve greater
diffusion in a more controlled manner. By using sound diffusers, first order reflections
are dispersed to be heard later by the listener, and by removing and delaying early
reflections, diffusion and absorption can make a small music studio sound like a
larger room. Consequently, design is all about locating the reflection points for first
order reflections, and applying appropriate treatment there.

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