Thiele/Small parameters

After Thiele and Small presented their paper ‘Loudspeakers in vented boxes’ loudspeaker engineers would not have the trust on (a lot of) trial and error anymore. The paper presented a set of parameters to predict the electro acoustic behavior of loudspeakers in vented enclosures. These parameters appeared to be useful for all types of enclosure designs. Thiele and Small opted that all loudspeaker manufactures should make these parameters available for their products. Luckily most manufacturers did and now you can use these parameters to predict a part of the acoustical behavior of your design. Thiele refers to loudspeaker engineering, before the release of their paper, as a black art. With all the symbols and numbers involved for many it may still look like some sort of magic. This article is written to guide you in unraveling the mystery behind the T/S parameters!