Modal Equalization of Loudspeaker-Room Responses at Low Frequencies

The control of excessively long decays in a listening room with strong low-frequency modes is problematic, expensive, and sometimes impossible with conventional passive means. A systematic methodology is presented to design active modal equalization able to selectively reduce the mode decay rate of a loudspeaker ‐ room system at low frequencies in the vicinity of a sound engineer’s listening location. Modal equalization is able to increase the rate of initial sound decay at mode frequencies, and can be used with conventional magnitude equalization to optimize the reproduced sound quality. Two methods of implementing active modal equalization are proposed. The first modifies the primary sound such that the mode decay rates are controlled. The second uses separate secondary radiators and controls the mode decays with additional sound fed into the secondary radiators. Case studies are presented of implementing active modal control according to the first method.