I want to talk about a bit of history.
I invented the term Closefield back in early-90s when we introduced the worlds fist Closefield Monitor Silver5L.
I believed that the small area where the listener and the speaker are placed near to each other, like on a desk, should not be called Near Field because the term is already defined in acoustic engineering for something else.
Obviously as the sound in a room does decay at 6 dB for a doubling of the distance from the speaker, the listener and the speaker are not in a near-field. Hence, all those small speakers on the market that are advertised as Near Field are using the wrong term.
Here is how I explained the concept back in 1993, when "near field" was not yet a thing. We had t-shirts made with "Closefield, not Near Field" written on, which we distributed at trade shows
Unfortunately, like most thing in marketing the term near field became the de-facto but totally wrong name for small monitors that can be mounted at a desk. As a small company with limited marketing budget the term "closefield" lost.
I invented the term Closefield back in early-90s when we introduced the worlds fist Closefield Monitor Silver5L.
I believed that the small area where the listener and the speaker are placed near to each other, like on a desk, should not be called Near Field because the term is already defined in acoustic engineering for something else.
http://www.acoustic-glossary.co.uk/sound-fields.htmNear Sound Field: that part of a sound field, usually within about two wavelengths of a noise source, where there is no simple relationship between sound level and distance, where the sound pressure does not obey the Inverse Square Law and the Particle Velocity is not in phase with the Sound Pressure.
Obviously as the sound in a room does decay at 6 dB for a doubling of the distance from the speaker, the listener and the speaker are not in a near-field. Hence, all those small speakers on the market that are advertised as Near Field are using the wrong term.
Here is how I explained the concept back in 1993, when "near field" was not yet a thing. We had t-shirts made with "Closefield, not Near Field" written on, which we distributed at trade shows
Unfortunately, like most thing in marketing the term near field became the de-facto but totally wrong name for small monitors that can be mounted at a desk. As a small company with limited marketing budget the term "closefield" lost.
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