PlasmaSonic SSTC - Finally - Great Bass Response!

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Original poster: dhmccauley-at-spacecatlighting-dot-com 

One of the major pitfalls in reproducing audio with a SSTC is the lack of
quality low frequency (bass) response.  From the beginning, I always
believed that the lack of low frequency
reproduction was of a physical one.  Granted, to reproduce low frequency
sound, you need to move a lot of air.   However, with the purchase of nice
parametric equalizer, I am now
reproducing decent low frequency sounds down to about 100Hz!

The initial problem was that without an equalizing system, whenever you
tried increasing the volume to get extra bass, you were always increasing
the gain on all frequencies.  This led to
mid to upper frequency spikes which were causing the PWM system to start
clipping ultimately leading to very poor audio quality.

However, with a parametric (or standard) equalizer, you can really increase
the gain of the low frequencies and at the same time back off the mid and
higher frequencies and maintain decent
audio quality and decent low frequency reproduction.  Having an equalizer
for SSTC audio modulation work is very important if you want to greatly
increase the overall quality of the system.

The next step (with the arrival of my new PlasmaSonic II boards) is to
continue working on my conceptual SSTC woofer / subwoofer design.  I am very
confident that I can reproduce with
some significant volume, bass frequencies down to at least 50Hz!!  I'm
currently trying to get some parameters of the SSTC discharge so that I can
design and build a mechanical enclosure
similar to subwoofer boxes.  However, the difficult part is modeling the
discharge.  Thiele-Small  parameters are easy to determine and usually
supplied with most speakers, but they are non-existant
for corona discharge speakers.  And I'm not even sure they can be applied to
a corona type discharge.  In any event, its most likely going to be trial by
error process, but an exciting one at that.

The Captain