Acknowledgements

I would like to give my deepest thanks to Janet Payne, without whose encouragement and enthusiasm for the project this book would almost certainly never have been written.

Thanks also to Dr Keith Holland, research fellow at the Institute of Sound and Vibration Research at the University of Southampton and lecturer in electro-acoustics to Tonmeister students at the University of Surrey, England. Aside from his calculation and generation of a number of computer figures in this book, I would like to thank him not only for providing the Glossary but also for the many hours of discussion, and help in ensuring that whilst this book aims to be accessible to as wide a readership as possible, it remains technically accurate. In acoustics, an ‘accurate generalisation’ tends to be a contradiction in terms.

Finally, many thanks to Sergio Castro, who spent countless hours at his computer, translating my hand-drawn sketches into the constructional figures that appear in this book. I was fortunate to have a friend who is not only artistically inclined, but who also understands the acoustic principles being described.

Philip Newell

Moaña

November 1997