I’ve taken the trig for designing uncoupled loudspeaker arrays and made it into its own piece of software. It is a big UI improvement over the old Excel sheet, it draws a diagram of the array, and it can export arrays as XML files for Meyer’s MAPP Online Pro. It’s written in Python, but I’ve created standalone versions for both Mac and PC.
Update 7/19/14: You can download the newer version of the calculator here.
Bob McCarthy’s method for designing uncoupled speaker arrays can take a lot of guesswork out of using MAPP. To further streamline the process, I made a calculator that describes the relations between the parameters of speakers in uncoupled arrays.
The important parameters are the spacing of the elements (s), the splay of the elements (β), each element’s coverage (φ), the distance at which the coverage patterns of adjacent speakers overlap (D-Unity), and the distance at which three elements overlap (D-Max). For simplicity’s sake, I have made some intermediate parameters:
Update 7/14/14: I’ve posted a vertical loudspeaker aiming calculator which is a better starting point than this in most cases
One of the things on which I’ve been working of late is a formula to find the ideal speaker coverage angle for a seating area. It has involved a lot of trigonometry and double checking in MAPP, but I’ve found something which seems to work pretty well for single speaker applications and fits conveniently into an excel calculator: