No practical impulse source is both powerful and perfectly omnidirectional
Evidence
The measurement of the impulse response of a room is an important case where perfect impulses are hard to generate. Unfortunately, a loudspeaker cannot produce impulses with high enough power. Balloon pops, hand claps, explosions, and electric sparks may be used to generate impulse-like sounds, all of which have some less than ideal properties, such as low repeatability and directional patterns deviating from the perfect, omnidirectional one. A high-power pulsed laser can also be used to generate impulses for acoustic measurements (see the example plot in Figure 2.20). Laserinduced pulses are repeatable and have an ideal omnidirectional pattern, although the cost of the device is, naturally, much higher, and using such devices is hazardous (Gómez Bolaños et al., 2013). — Ville Pulkki, Matti Karjalainen, Communication Acoustics- An…, 490
Categorization
Category: Factual Claims
- SEED: Room acoustics impulse measurement is a concrete, technical application of acoustic communication - angle on how measurement constraints (repeatability, directional pattern, power) shape how we characterize spaces.