Jon Sonne
Member of the Trade: Lucky Ears
- Joined
- Dec 9, 2014
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Dear Sounds Science subforum,
Recently we have seen that headphone manufacturers have developed closed-back headphones which tries to sound more like open-back headphones. One example is the Sennheiser HD 820, which uses concave gorilla glass and sound absorbers to remove resonances associated with closed-back headphones, in order to sound more like a closed-back headphone.
I was wondering if active noise cancellation could be useful in developing new closed-back headphones that sound more open, by removing unwanted resonances associated with closed-back headphones. The idea is simple (see figure below): The main driver of the headphone creates sound waves that propagate towards the ear. The back side of the main driver also creates sound waves. These sound waves propagate into the back-chamber of the headphone. Inside the back-chamber, a microphone measures the sound/resonance inside the back-chamber. A second driver situated further back in the back-chamber plays the inverse phase equivalent of the sound/resonances the microphone picked up. In this way, resonances created by the sound waves propagating backwards into the back-chamber of the headphone could be cancelled.
I would like to hear your opinion - If you believe this idea could be a plausible way to improve the sound of closed-back headphones, I might try to put a pair of small open-back headphones inside an active noise cancellation headphone to test the concept. If the open-back headphones still sounds partially open when inside the noise-cancellation headphones, it might be a viable strategy to create a more open-sounding closed-back headphone.
Cheers,
Jon Sonne
Recently we have seen that headphone manufacturers have developed closed-back headphones which tries to sound more like open-back headphones. One example is the Sennheiser HD 820, which uses concave gorilla glass and sound absorbers to remove resonances associated with closed-back headphones, in order to sound more like a closed-back headphone.
I was wondering if active noise cancellation could be useful in developing new closed-back headphones that sound more open, by removing unwanted resonances associated with closed-back headphones. The idea is simple (see figure below): The main driver of the headphone creates sound waves that propagate towards the ear. The back side of the main driver also creates sound waves. These sound waves propagate into the back-chamber of the headphone. Inside the back-chamber, a microphone measures the sound/resonance inside the back-chamber. A second driver situated further back in the back-chamber plays the inverse phase equivalent of the sound/resonances the microphone picked up. In this way, resonances created by the sound waves propagating backwards into the back-chamber of the headphone could be cancelled.
I would like to hear your opinion - If you believe this idea could be a plausible way to improve the sound of closed-back headphones, I might try to put a pair of small open-back headphones inside an active noise cancellation headphone to test the concept. If the open-back headphones still sounds partially open when inside the noise-cancellation headphones, it might be a viable strategy to create a more open-sounding closed-back headphone.
Cheers,
Jon Sonne
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