Keynote: Acoustic Simulation for Immersive Audio

In this keynote talk from the COMSOL Conference 2024 Boston, Doug Button and Joe Jankovsky of Sonos explore how they use modeling and simulation to analyze and improve the acoustic directivity of its products.

Jankovsky begins by discussing the increasing prevalence of spatial audio and sound dispersion and how Sonos is using the COMSOL Multiphysics^® software to develop a smart speaker that creates immersive audio for listening to music. Button then mentions how innovation comes from a process of iteration and explores how using simulation enables Sonos to quickly simulate audio dispersion before running real-world tests, making their iteration process more efficient while allowing them to be more creative in their thinking. He explains how he and his team were able to model every part of a speaker, including compression drivers, phase plugs, woofer occlusion, substrates, side horns, and baffles. He then focuses on their baffle model simulation process and highlights how varying baffle models create varying sound dispersion. He takes viewers through several of the 80 baffle iterations that their team developed before landing on the winning model.

After further modeling and testing of specific speaker components, Button, Jankovsky, and their team ran full system testing on a virtual prototype and weighted surface pressure distribution. They show how the real-world sound pressure and frequency measurements are in close agreement with the COMSOL Multiphysics^® model results.

Doug Button is a distinguished audio system engineer at Sonos and holds 45 patents. He previously worked for Apple, JBL, and HARMAN International. Joe Jankovsky joined Sonos as a principal acoustics engineer in 2022 after previously working for Bose. He holds a PhD in mechanical engineering from Yale University.