Speaker
Description
In modern and stylish kitchens, most of the time, a so-called built-in household appliance is enclosed in wooden furniture to enhance aesthetic attribute and elegance. These housings are definitely impacting the sound and vibration of the household appliance itself, to the extent that was not studied before. Like any other enclosure for a sound source the impact could be used for shaping of sound pressure level and perceived sound quality. At the same time, the sound emission of household appliances was improved significantly by manufacturers over last years, reaching noise floor levels, notably for refrigerators and dishwashers. Authors of this paper decided to study the acoustics of wooden enclosures, aiming at understanding their strengths and weaknesses in terms of contribution to overall appliance sound output. The experiments consist of placing omnidirectional speakers inside the enclosures and testing, with selected microphones, the amount of acoustic energy that traveled outside. At the end, some concepts with typical and novel materials were tested attempting an improvement of overall sound insertion loss.