A Bipolar Transmission Line Project -- the TLB

Table of Contents
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28_august_07 -- at the request of a reader an alternate Metronome enclosure has been developed for this project. It is the last entry in the table here.


The Transmission Line loudspeaker is historically a very difficult speaker to describe. In popular literature the concept is poorly understood, no commonly accepted technical definition seems to exist, and the existing citations are either very mathematical or full of second hand misconceptions.

This document is an amateur's attempt to describe a TL variant and is not a comprehensive tutorial on the TL. A note of caution is necessary: the TLB is not a basic TL since the push-push pressurization drastically changes the systems response. The document is subdivided into the following sections:

  1. Introduction
  2. Design Methodology

    Discusses the design evolution of the TLB.

  3. Radiation Response

    Discusses the polar response of the TLB and it's relationship to the impedance data.

  4. Transient Response

    Discusses the difficult concept of transient response by modeling the gated sine-wave response and presenting alternate views of interpreting the phenomena.

  5. Frequency Response

    Discusses the relationship of near field woofer's response to that of the TL's Terminus response and the TL's systems response. A short view of fiber effects on the stuffing of the TL line is presented.

  6. Construction

    'Where's the meat' section.

  7. Appendices

    Technical supporting information

An attempt has been made to explain some of the more technical issues as hyperlinks to the specific concept discussed and by necessity are somewhat mathematical. In these links some reference material is cited for further study. However this material is optional and depends upon the interest of the reader. The document can be read as an Introduction, then jump to the Construction section, the speaker built, and the music enjoyed.

The documentation started as a series of notes about the TLB and evolved into a very complex document. I would like to express my thanks to David for his patience, graphics, numerous corrections and changes, for a very difficult editing job that hopefully make this document readable.

[ Contents | Introduction | Methodology | Radiation Response | Transient Response | Frequency Response | Construction ]

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