A Mechatronic approach to Active Subwoofer Design

Professor Robert Munnig Schmidt teaches Mechatronics at one of Netherlands prestigious universities, but his hobby is in audio. Since a (sub)woofer is nothing else than an electrically controlled mechanical system, he decided to apply mechatronic techniques to the design of a high performance subwoofer. After a thorough investigation into issues like efficiency, dynamic speaker properties and motional feedback limitations Robert proceeds to design a subwoofer that follows the THX© specification for subwoofers in a large listening room. The result is a 2-driver, less than 0.1m3 sized box providing up to 96dB intensity at 20Hz and 106db above 40 Hz at 5m distance. Roberts audio ideas and projects are published at his RMS website.