Why Design Another Sound System?

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If it is possible:
1. To design a good sounding audio system that is not expensive, is robust and very easy to use
2. To use the existing remote control of the TV or any other sound source and yet not have to use it frequently to change the volume during soft passages, loud passages and during commercials
3. To be able to enjoy good quality sound with all the details at any volume level, especially at low levels.

...In other words, if it is possible to design a complete sound system that one can take home, unpack and start enjoying it to the fullest, right away, then a new design is needed.

The big difference here is in taking customer needs and converting it into engineering requirements as a basis for a new sound system design.

I have made a start and will continue to share my thought process. The topic is vast. A new sound system that is Stereo or Surround or both? For living room with TV or a dedicated room with projector and acoustics treatment or a Cinema theater?

Let's see how this goes. I just hope that I will be able to sequence this correctly without creating a confusion.
Do let me know what you think.

Ravindra Desai.
 
After we have broadly defined the customer requirements, let us try to discribe them so as to bring more clarity as to what it really means.

1. Good sounding: It is a very vague term. But we have to wrap some terms around it. Content wise, sound consists of vocals, music and ambient sounds. Tonal quality wise, sound can be broken into bass, mid-range and treble. So can Good sounding now mean sound that has the correct ratio of dialogues, music and ambient sounds with the correct amount of bass, mid-range and treble so as to make it sound 'like-LIVE?'

2. Cost: System cost obeys the 'Keep It Simple' rule and audio is no exception. We will design the system so that it will meet the given requirements and avoid over-design if it does not wow the customer. This will need the right choice of technology and re-use of building blocks where ever applicable.

3. Robust: It should last long while delivering consistent quality. Good design and correct choice of components will keep the product inside the box, intact. However, care needs to be taken to withstand abuse from outside the box. The external factors could be power supply fluctuation, audio input signal strength, short on speaker wires etc.

4. Easy to use: It is a very very important parameter that just gets drowned in other features of the product. We need to remember that sound systems are used by masses, not just by engineers and audio buffs. Products are made to look jazzy by including a host of knobs and switches. Such systems are sold under the pretext of letting the user have complete control over what sound quality is delivered. What is not told to him is the fact that misuse of these knobs and settings can result in total caos.

To be continued...

Kindly participate by adding your thoughts, experience and expertise.

Thanks!

Ravindra.
 
Refer pic to your client.
 

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4. Easy to use: It is a very very important parameter that just gets drowned in other features of the product. We need to remember that sound systems are used by masses, not just by engineers and audio buffs. Products are made to look jazzy by including a host of knobs and switches. Such systems are sold under the pretext of letting the user have complete control over what sound quality is delivered. What is not told to him is the fact that misuse of these knobs and settings can result in total caos.

Posting on an audio DIY forum seems like a very weird way to do market research for a thing meant to be used by the masses.

In any case, given a certain set of features, I think it is much handier to have one knob assigned to each feature than to have only few knobs and some n levels deep menu structure in which no-one can find what they are looking for.
 
When a sound system meets seemingly paradoxical requirements of
quality, cost and ease of use, it should appeal to everyone and should find use not just in living rooms but in Home Theaters, Cinema Halls and even Gaming Rigs, Public Address Systems and Dance Floors. However for the purpose of this proposal, only one application area, Sound System for a Home, is detailed here.

Houses typically use one or more of the three popular type of sound system configurations:
a. Stereo: to listen to music. Here reproducing the sound as faithfully as possible, tonality wise and sound stage wise, is important. Best sound experience is limited to a seat exactly between the stereo speakers.( Bose 901 tried and succeeded to a great extent to eliminate the 'sweet spot' limitation.)

b. Surround: This is very popular with a video source such as a TV or a projector for watching movies, sports, music videos and gaming. Anchoring of vocals to the center of the picture is necessary and helps in off-axis seating. Ambient sound is decoded and has a dedicated channel to make us feel part of the action on the screen. Surround configurations vary from 2.1 channel to 5.1 channel and upwards.

c. Soundbar: Easy to set up and aesthetically unobtrusive. These use immersive sound techniques to mimic surround sound with only one speaker (enclosure). Like stereo, the Soundbar configuration also suffers from 'sweet spot' limitation.

So now that the configurations that need to be handled are decided, its time that the hardware required to do it possible needs to be looked into.

I would like to make some clarification at this point: The proposed sound system and its features does not make a claim as being the best nor is it a replacement for any existing sound systems and formats but is a choice that is simply not there in the market today.

To be continued...

Thanks!

Ravindra.
 
The building blocks for the sound system consists of:

1. Digital Audio Processor board with on board power supply: Based on ADAU1701 with PCM510X for two additional output channels
2. 3 x 20Wrms Audio Amplifier board with on board power supply
3. Application firmware to drive the digital audio processor
4. Speaker System.

The block diagram for 1 and 2 is attached while I will detail 3 and 4 at a later time.
Also attached is the processor and amplifier board component layout. The attachment will give a fair idea about the capabilities of the processor and the amplifier boards. I will, however, describe each of them in detail in my next posts.

Stay tuned and do let me know what you think so far.

Thanks!

Ravindra.
 

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  • Block Diagrams- Processor & Power Amplifier.pdf
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  • Amplifier- Silk & SM.pdf
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  • Processor- Silk & SM.pdf
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