Headphone Equalizer Gain Tuning to Prevent Clipping
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Solution Overview
Problem
Inexpensive headphones distributed on aircraft suffer from sound quality issues such as sound cracking (clipping) and decreased volume feeling due to equalizer adjustments.
Innovation Solution
An acoustic adjustment method using a preamplifier and equalizer, where an initial gain value is set based on energy differences before and after equalizer correction, and adjusted to prevent clipping and maintain volume feeling by calculating loudness and clipping occurrence rates.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Manufacturing precision
If an equalizer is used to correct acoustic characteristics of inexpensive headphones, then sound quality is improved, but clipping occurs and volume feeling decreases
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary measurement of the headphone's acoustic characteristics before equalization correction. By measuring the frequency response in advance and calculating the appropriate equalizer coefficients beforehand, the system prepares the correction parameters to avoid clipping during actual audio playback, thus preventing the harmful effect before it occurs.
Solution Approach 2:
The system uses feedback from the measured acoustic characteristics of the specific headphone to dynamically adjust the equalizer settings. The measured frequency response data feeds back into the equalizer coefficient calculation, allowing the system to adapt the correction to the actual headphone performance and avoid over-correction that would cause clipping.
2Manufacturing precision
If an equalizer is used to correct acoustic characteristics of inexpensive headphones, then sound quality is improved, but volume feeling decreases
Solution Approach 1:
The system dynamically changes the equalizer parameters based on the measured acoustic characteristics of the headphone. By adjusting the equalizer coefficients according to the actual frequency response, the system optimizes the balance between correcting sound quality and maintaining volume feeling, rather than using fixed aggressive correction parameters.
Solution Approach 2:
The system applies partial correction rather than aggressive full correction. By measuring the actual acoustic characteristics and applying only the necessary equalization to correct deficiencies, the system avoids excessive correction that would reduce volume feeling while still improving sound quality where needed.
Data Source
AI summary
An arithmetic device executes a method for acoustic adjustment including: setting an initial value of a gain value of a preamplifier based on a difference between energies of the test sound source before and after correction by an equalizer to an input sound; amplifying a volume of the test sound source by the preamplifier using the initial value, calculating a loudness value and a clipping occurrence rate of the test sound source corrected by the equalizer, and determining whether calculation results of the loudness value and the clipping occurrence rate are each less than a predetermined threshold; and reducing the initial value of the gain value by a specified value in a case where the calculation result of the loudness value or the clipping occurrence rate is equal to or greater than the predetermined threshold.


