TECHNICAL NOTE #11 rev.

01

Damping control
Damping of a 2nd order system and how to implement a feedback loop for electronic damping control

1 Speaker as second order system The under-damped (0 < ζ <1) angular frequency depends
from the damping case with the following relationship:
Some key elements that characterize a speaker are the mass
of the moving parts and the stiffness of the suspension, together
these form a resonant 2nd order system. If the cone is excited at
resonant frequencies the oscillation tends to have a behavior like This formulas means that if the cone is displaced and then
in FIGURE 1 (y = 1 is the steady position of the system). released (with hands or with an electrical signal), it oscillates
across the resting position for several cycles at its natural resonant
frequency; this oscillation will decrease in amplitude and finally
reach a state of rest due to the small amount of damping.
If this under-damped speaker is driven by hands or driven by a
voltage source having a very high internal impedance (to maintain
the under-damped condition), the cone will vibrate at a greater
amplitude at frequencies close to its natural resonance. This action
is similar to pushing a swing or pendulum “in time” with its natural
period so as to obtain large amplitudes. The frequency-response
curve of the speaker under these conditions will show a peaked
output near the cone resonance, usually between 30 and 100
cycles per second.
This kind of oscillation is all distortion, since the cone does not
follow the applied square waveform (or impulse) of depressing and
FIGURE 1: Second order system, various damping behaviors releasing it.
The result is not only
ff Over-damped (ζ > 1): The system returns (exponentially distortion but another effect
decays) to equilibrium without oscillating. Larger values of the is to reduce the SPL produced
damping ratio ζ slower this process. by the diaphragm of the
loudspeaker because of its
ff Critically damped (ζ = 1): The system returns to equilibrium own inertia after the end of
as quickly as possible without oscillating. This is often desired the stimulus. The frequency
for the damping of systems such as doors. of the sound produced with FIGURE 2: Under-damped
this movement is the resonant response example
ff Under-damped (ζ < 1): The system oscillates (with a slightly frequency of the moving system.
different frequency than the undamped case) with the A common term for this phenomenon is “overhang”. In severe
amplitude gradually decreasing to zero. cases this can translate into a “one note bass” behavior.

ζ (zeta) is the damping ratio, defined as: 2 Modelling the Loudspeaker as a Lumped
System

Loudspeaker systems are more complex than a typical second

order system, a driver with a voice coil is also a current generator,
ff k: stiffness. since it has a coil attached to the cone and suspension, and that
coil is immersed in a magnetic field.
ff m: mass. A handy way to simulate the damping control is to represent the
loudspeaker as a lumped electrical equivalent circuit, composed
ff c: viscous damping coefficient. by three parts:

In the real world some mechanical damping is always present,

but such a slight amount that the system can be considered highly
under-damped. In this case ζ = 0 the resonant angular frequency
is:

FIGURE 3: Equivalent Speaker Circuit

© 2012 - 2013 Powersoft Keep This Technical Note For Future Reference
powersoft_TN011_DampingControl_en_v1.0
 ff Equivalent electrical circuit: Re is the resistance of the output connector) and consequently the value of the braking current.
stage of the amplifier and the connection cables; Le is the Remember that the output impedance consists of the amplifier
imaginary part of the voice coil inductance; Revc is the real part plus the cable/connector and it’s the impedance of the entire
of the voice coil inductance. interface that defines the damping of the diaphragm.
There is a damping value at which the cone returns to the rest
ff Equivalent mechanical circuit: modelled with an electrical position in the quickest possible time without further oscillations
equivalent representing the mechanical parameters of the This condition is called the critically damped state. Transient
loudspeaker. Mm, is the electrical capacitance due to the distortion is greatly reduced and the low-frequency response is
moving mass; Cm is the electrical inductance due to the more consistent.
compliance (the inverse of the stiffness) of the moving mass As we will see later the trick is to regulate the voltage and
and R m is the electrical resistance due to the suspension current at the resonance points, changing the resistance seen by
system. the coil on the amplifier.

ff Equivalent acoustical circuit: modelled with an electrical 3 The damping factor

equivalent representing different acoustics parameters of
the loudspeaker. MA models the air mass and rA models the In audio system terminology, the damping factor is the ratio
radiation impedance. of the nominal impedance of the loudspeaker to the source
impedance and describes the ability of the amplifier to control
This equivalent circuit is an insight about what parameters undesirable movement of the speaker cone near the resonant
modify the characteristics of the loudspeaker, in FIGURE 4 it frequency of the speaker system. It is usually found in the
is represented the electrical input impedance as a function context of low-frequency driver behavior, because LF drivers and
of frequency, developed using the equivalent circuit of the subwoofers have the most problems regarding damping. Their
loudspeaker. moving mass is quite high and their suspensions are comparatively
weak compared to this mass. Because of this such drivers have
a relatively poor mechanical damping and therefore electrical
damping is important. High frequency drivers have less mass and
stiff suspensions compared to that mass. As a result electrical
damping is negligible.
To define the damping factor only the resistive parts of source,
cable and coil are considered. This simplification is taken because
the worst situation is around the resonance of the speaker, where
the impedance is pure resistive.
FIGURE 4: Example of frequency response of a typical Speaker Load impedance Zload (input impedance) and source impedance
Circuit Zsource (output impedance) are shown in FIGURE 5. The source
impedance (seen by the loudspeaker) includes the connecting
Without going too much in details we can observe a very cable impedance.
important fact: every time a voltage is applied to the coil, it starts
to move in the magnetic field, along with the attached cone. If
the cone is mechanically moved, the motion of the coil in the
magnetic field generates a voltage in the coil called Back-EMF.
This force will be seen by any electrically attached equipment,
such as an amplifier. In fact, the amp’s output circuitry will be the
main electrical load on the “voice coil current generator”. Two FIGURE 5: Definition of electric damping factor
important factors need to be considered:
The damping factor (DF) is defined as:
ff Larger diaphragm excursion brings to a higher Back-EMF. This
is obviously more critical at low frequencies where diaphragm
movement is large and results in a large current draw. A
poor damping brings to a compressed and ill-defined bass
reproduction. A high damping factor (which requires low output impedance
at the amplifier output) rapidly damps unwanted cone movements
ff A lesser output impedance of the amplifier results in a less induced by the mechanical resonance of the speaker, acting as the
negative influence of the Back-EMF on the amplifier’s circuit. equivalent of a “brake” on the voice coil motion (just as a short
If that load has lower resistance, the current will be larger and circuit across the terminals of a rotary electrical generator will
the voice coil will be strongly forced to decelerate. make it very hard to turn). It is generally thought that tighter control
of voice coil motion is desirable, as it is believed to contribute to
For a given speaker, the amount of damping can be varied by a better-quality sound.
changing the value of the external resistance (amplifier plus cables/ The damping factor varies with frequency, since driver’s voice

2
coils, as seen above, are complex impedances changing with
frequency. In addition, the electrical characteristics of every voice
coil will change with temperature; high power levels will increase
coil temperature and thus resistance. Finally, passive crossovers
(made of relatively large inductors, capacitors, and resistors) that
can be found between the amplifier and speaker drivers also affect
the damping factor, again in a way that varies with frequency.
As a rule of thumb, for audio power amplifiers, this source
impedance Zsource (output impedance) is generally smaller than
0.1 � and from the point of view of the driver voice coil, is a near
a short-circuit.
FIGURE 7: Damping factor vs Distance, best if >50
4 Cable effect
As already told the actual amplifiers has typically a very low
If the problem lies only with the impedance of the amplifier output impedance, this means a high DF, or better, the effect
output stage and a manufacturer could design the ideal output of the amplifier is very little (negligible) in reducing the damping
stage with an output impedance of zero ohm, the consequence factor.
would be a critical damped system (what we ideally want). This Other to the cable loss, another important effect of damping
ideal amplifier becomes an ideal voltage controlled generator. variation is the temperature variation of the coil, causing a change in
Generally the actual amplifiers are very near to be perfect voltage the impedance curve (see the tech note regarding limiters).
generator (there’s always a huge damping factor in the amps
specs), but let’s consider the contribution of cables. 5 Compensate the Damping:
The resistance of a wire increases with the length, decreases Active Damping control
with increased conductor cross-sectional area and it’s frequency
independent (in the audio bandwidth). As the resistance of the A solution to the variable DF mentioned above could be to add
wire increases, the current flowing in the circuit reduces; this leads a negative and adjustable “emulated” resistor, in series with the
immediately to a line loss problem resulting in a drop of the sound output of the amp. In that way It would be possible to compensate
level. the parasitic impedance of the cable and/or hot voice coil effect, in
This partitive effect can be compensated with the good design order to maintain the correct damping factor.
rule of the 5%: use wire with a resistance less than the 5% of the But how to implement this negative resistor? The DSP board
nominal speaker impedance (for a 4 � speaker it’s recommended acquires the output voltage and current signals, with a very low
a cable with less than 0.02 � resistance). latency. A fraction of the output current signal is added to the
signal output by the KDSP.

FIGURE 8: Feedback loop for damping control with negative virtual

resistance
Where:
FIGURE 6: Insertion Loss (dB), best if <0.2db
ff Vi: input voltage (taken after the processing).
Anyway we must remember that higher the resistance, lower
the braking effect, so cables will lead to a non-zero impedance ff Vd: damping voltage controlled by the current.
inside the output stage of the (near to be) perfect voltage
generator. ff V: output voltage, applied on the speaker.
But how much a poor damped system brings to a loose sound?
In literature it’s possible to define a DF limit from 50 to a minimum ff I: output current.
of 20, below those values the overhang bass effect start to be
unacceptable. ff R: virtual resistance.

ff K: a constant, for feedback stability control.

ff G: (linear) gain of the amplifier.

3
 For example, suppose we add a –2 � virtual resistance, we add 7 Bibliography
a contribution of 2 times the actual current (–R*K = 2 assuming
K=1) to the output voltage. With no load and a 0 V input, we will ff The Loudspeaker Design Cookbook 5th Edition; Dickason,
obtain a 0 V output. If we now sink a 1 A current from the output, Vance., Audio Amateur Press, 1997. [2] Beranek, L.
we will see that the output voltage will raise up to 2 V, thanks to L. Acoustics. 2nd ed. Acoustical Society of America,
the I contribution. We have built a generator which output voltage Woodbridge, NY. 1993.
is dependent from the output current, with a positive resistance,
voltage drops with current, while with a negative resistance, ff Technical Zoom, Tiziano Morganti - Powersoft newsletter,
voltage increases with current. December 2007
As any feedback loop stability problems could arise, for
example if we change the factor from 2 to another value, let’s ff http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damping_factor
say 4, with a load of 2 ohm the result would be a –2 ohm output
impedance amplifier with a 2 ohm load. ff http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damping_ratio
Other issues may arise with latency, the DSP is a piece of digital
hardware and as any discrete system there are problem in timing ff http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Engineering_Acoustics/Moving_
and interaction with analog quantity. Most of the implementation Coil_Loudspeaker
effort was taken to guarantee the stability of the system despite
of ADC / DAC and DSP latencies and to manage situations where ff http://www.paulspeltz.com/tomcik/index.html
user settings could cause and unstable behavior, avoiding the
creation of any destructive oscillation... ff http://www.classic-audio.com/marantz/mdampingfactor.html

6 Possible applications of the DF control ff http://www.audioholics.com/education/amplifier-technology/

damping-factor-effects-on-system-response
ff Cable loss compensation.
ff http://www.audioholics.com/education/cables/speaker-
ff Voice coil increase in resistance due to heating compensation, cable-gauge
even dynamically adjusted with the estimated voice coil
temperature. ff http://www.prosoundweb.com/article/damping_factor/P2/

ff Damping factor “creative” adjustment, to create a dry and ff http://www.synaudcon.com/site/author/pat-brown/the-

damped or a “boomy” bass response (i.e.: DSP4). amplifier-to-loudspeaker-interface/

ff Active loudspeakers with reduced loading volume: a negative

resistance has the effect of reducing the Qes of the driver,
allowing for smaller enclosures for the same driver.

ff Introducing negative feedback in amplification chain.

4
 Via Enrico Conti, 5
50018 Scandicci (FI) Italy

Tel: +39 055 735 0230

Fax: +39 055 735 6235

General inquiries: [email protected]

Sales: [email protected]
Application & technical support: [email protected]
Service & maintenance: [email protected]

www.powersoft-audio.com

© 2012 - 2013 Powersoft powersoft_TN011_DampingControl_en_v1.0