Sweet spot (acoustics)

The sweet spot is a term used by audiophiles and recording engineers to describe the focal point between two speakers, where an individual is fully capable of hearing the stereo audio mix the way it was intended to be heard by the mixer. In the case of surround sound, this is the focal point between four or more speakers.

Different static methods exist to broaden the area of the "sweet spot". A discussion can be found in Merchel et al.

Alternatively, the "sweet spot" can be adjusted dynamically to the actual position of the listener. Therefore, a correct phantom source localization is possible over the whole listening area. This approach is implemented in the open source project SweetSpotter.

Sound engineers also refer to the "sweet spot" of any noise-producing body that may be captured with a microphone. Every individual instrument has its own sweet spot, the perfect location to place the microphone or microphones, in order to obtain the best sound.

References

Sweet spot

Sweet spot or Sweet Spot may refer to:

Music

Albums

Songs

Sweet spot (sports)

The sweet spot is a place where a combination of factors results in a maximum response for a given amount of effort. In tennis, squash, racquetball, baseball, cricket or golf a given swing will result in a more powerful hit if the ball strikes the racket, bat or club on the latter's sweet spot.

The sweet spot is the location at which the object being struck, usually a ball, absorbs the maximum amount of the available forward momentum and rebounds away from the racket, bat, club, etc. with a greater velocity than if struck at any other point on the racket, bat or club.

In endurance sports such as cycling, sweet spot training aims to maximise training benefit (generally for performance at or near FTP, or Functional Threshold Power) by optimally balancing training effect, physiological strain and maximum duration.

References

Phonation

The term phonation has slightly different meanings depending on the subfield of phonetics. Among some phoneticians, phonation is the process by which the vocal folds produce certain sounds through quasi-periodic vibration. This is the definition used among those who study laryngeal anatomy and physiology and speech production in general. Phoneticians in other subfields, such as linguistic phonetics, call this process voicing, and use the term phonation to refer to any oscillatory state of any part of the larynx that modifies the airstream, of which voicing is just one example. Voiceless and supra-glottal phonations are included under this definition.

Voicing

The phonatory process, or voicing, occurs when air is expelled from the lungs through the glottis, creating a pressure drop across the larynx. When this drop becomes sufficiently large, the vocal folds start to oscillate. The minimum pressure drop required to achieve phonation is called the phonation threshold pressure, and for humans with normal vocal folds, it is approximately 2–3 cm H₂O. The motion of the vocal folds during oscillation is mostly lateral, though there is also some superior component as well. However, there is almost no motion along the length of the vocal folds. The oscillation of the vocal folds serves to modulate the pressure and flow of the air through the larynx, and this modulated airflow is the main component of the sound of most voiced phones.