Characteristics of Plasma Speaker and Further Development

Abstract

The conventional diaphragm loudspeakers have been on the main stage of world for the past 50 years or even longer serving as a tool to convert electrical signals to sound waves. This technology is traditional yet the most popular design adopted by everyone including ordinary citizens, companies, governments, audiophiles and even sound engineers. Due to the long history of diaphragm loudspeaker and the rapid development of modern technology, it has been evolved for decades in pursuit of better sound quality, portability, higher signal-to-noise-ratio and power efficiency. It is observed that diaphragm loudspeaker is 'well-developed'. However, due to the restrain of the current technology and innovation, conventional loudspeakers are experiencing a 'bottleneck situation'. Loudspeaker designs are limited to the shape of the cabinet and styles of drivers (diaphragm unit). The milestone accomplished in the middle of 20th century was an innovative 'Plasma Speaker', a speaker design without any 'mass' to produce sound wave propagation. This project aims at analysing the performance of the plasma speaker in terms of frequency response, power efficiency and directivity. Hence, provided that the low-end frequency has a poor response (low value in dB), a methodology called 'Missing Fundamental' was then implemented to compensate. How the performance has been improved is then attributed to a number of participants in a survey.