Experimental measurement of the nonlinearities of electrodynamic microphones

This paper presents an experimental way of characterizing the nonlinearities of electrodynamic microphones used as acoustical sources. This functioning occurs for reciprocal calibration techniques. For this purpose, its electrical impedance is measured with a Wayne Kerr wedge which has an excellent precision. Moreover, it can be noted that the Thiele and Small model is used to characterize its electrical impedance. Furthermore, an experimental method based on Simplex algorithm allows us to construct polynomial laws which describe the dependence of the Thiele and Small parameters with the input voltage. The nonlinear variations obtained allow us to determine the nonlinear differential equation of the electrodynamic microphone. Then, this equation is solved numerically in order to confirm the accuracy of the polynomial laws obtained by the Simplex algorithm. The distortions are measured with a laser Doppler velocimeter and compared with the ones obtained by the numerical solving of the nonlinear differential equation. The experimental displacement spectrum is consistent with the theoretical one.