A Performance Ranking of Seven Different Types of Loudspeaker Line Arrays

Seven types of loudspeaker line arrays were ranked considering eight performance parameters including 1) Beamwidth uniformity, 2) Directivity uniformity, 3) Sound field uniformity, 4) Side lobe suppression, 5) Uniformity of polar response, 6) Smoothness of off-axis frequency response, 7) Sound pressure rolloff versus distance, and 8) Near-far polar pattern uniformity. Line arrays analyzed include: 1. Un-shaded straight-line array, 2. Hann-shaded straight-line array, 3. "J"-line array, 4. Spiral- or progressive-line array, 5. Un-shaded circular-arc array, 6. CBT circular-arc array, and 7. CBT delay-curved straight-line array. All arrays were analyzed assuming no extra drive signal processing other than frequency-independent shading. A weighted performance analysis yielded the following ranking from best to worse 6, 7, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, with the CBT Legendre-shaded circular-arc array on top and the un-shaded straight-line array on the bottom.