ENEE408J: Capstone Design Project; Audio Electronics Engineering

Credits: 3

Description

Prerequisite: Completion of ENEE303 or ENEE304 with a C- or better.

The field of electronics for musicians encompasses all the fundamentals of electrical engineering, such as general physics, electric circuits, analog and digital electronics, signals and systems as well as electromagnetics. This course will cover the fundamentals of electronics for musicians, providing the theoretical and practical tools for final class projects - to be designed, built and presented.

Semesters Offered

Spring 2023, Spring 2024, Spring 2025
Testudo

Learning Objectives

The field of electronics for musicians encompasses all the fundamentals of electrical engineering, such as general physics, electric circuits, analog and digital electronics, signals and systems as well as electromagnetics. This course will cover the fundamentals of electronics for musicians, providing the theoretical and practical tools for final class projects - to be designed, built and presented.

Pre-requisites: Minimum of C- in ENEE303 or ENEE304

Topics Covered

Topics Covered:

  1. Common instruments
    1. General overview of the physics of operation and/or internal circuitry
    2. Transducers (magnetic, piezoelectric)
    3. Designing passive and active low, high-pass filters (transfer functions and bode plots)
  2. The electroacoustic transducers (loudspeakers)
    1. General overview of the various parts (pole piece, magnet, voice coil, cone, spider and basket)
    2. Frequency response, input impedance
    3. Driver types, speaker enclosures, bass reflex port, staggered resonances
    4. Efficiency, sensitivity, directivity
  3. Amplifiers
    1. Preamplifiers and output stage circuitry
      1. Common emitter/cathode, phase inverters, push-pull drivers, small single equivalent circuits, amplification factor, transconductance
      2. Differences between Class A, B, AB, C, D
      3. Measuring Total Harmonic Distortion
      4. Power supplies, output transformers and impedance matching
    2. Solid state as well as vacuum tube-based amplifiers and their differences
  4. Sound effects and digital signal processing
    1. Analog implementations (distortion, reverb, delay, wah-wah, flanger, chorus, phaser, compression)
    2. ADC/DAC conversion and digital implementations (Algorithms to implement sound effects using difference equations)
    3. MATLab implementations
  5. Sound recording
    1. Microphones (dynamic, condenser, piezoelectric); polar patterns include: omnidirectional, bi-directional, subcardioid, cardioid, hyper-cardioid, supercardioid
    2. Soundproofing (anechoic chambers), damping, absorption, reflection, and diffusion of sound waves