Which catagory of enigineering does speaker design fall into?

Who designs speakers? Which catagory of enigineering does speaker design fall into? Where is the best place to study? What does the job intail, and how much does it pay?

Which catagory of enigineering does speaker design fall into?
Loudspeakers (including transducers) are and have been traditionally designed by electrical engineers. To the best of my knowledge no college or university classifies “loudspeaker engineering” as its own formal engineering discipline. Rather it is a subset of audio engineering and both are specialized fields within the larger formal discipline of electrical and electronics engineering, or simply “electrical engineering.”





As with most specialized engineering fields there are other disciplines that play varying yet significant roles. In the case of loudspeaker design and engineering such disciplines include acoustics (which is a specialized subset of physics,) mechanical engineering, materials science and the obligatory prerequisite - mathematics.





The best schools to prepare you for such a profession will be those that are not only fully accredited but also offer a strong electrical and electronics engineering curriculum. My recommendation is that you avail yourself of all the resources that are available from each of the professional organizations listed below in order to find the detailed educational information that is the most appropriate for your needs and expectations.





I am a very strong advocate of the community college, aka junior college, system for the first two or three years of a student’s basic scholastic curriculum. Upon completing a two-year program, and preferably obtaining an Associate of (Arts and) Science degree, you can then transfer to an accredited four-year university or college of your choice to complete the remainder of your undergraduate curriculum. That said, due to intense competition over a fairly limited number of job opportunities, you may be better served if you take the time to pursue a graduate degree* (i.e., at least a MSEE degree,) in order to increase your odds of finding employment in the profession in which you’re interested, i.e., loudspeaker engineering. On a related note, given the opportunity you should always take advantage of the multitude of internships that may come your way, especially those from companies that employ engineers or scientists in your desired profession.





The job responsibilities and pay will vary depending upon numerous factors including: your level of education, work experience, employer, geographical location, as well as the health of the job market, i.e., economic factors, including the demand and level of competition at any given period in time. For more detailed information the professional organizations listed below regularly publish salary surveys for various engineering disciplines and levels of job experience.





AES Education Initiatives


http://www.aes.org/education/





IEEE Consumer Electronics Society


http://ewh.ieee.org/soc/ces/





Acoustical Society of America


http://asa.aip.org





By the way, if you’re truly serious about a career in audio engineering I highly recommend membership in each of the organizations listed above.


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*The following is a very short list of some of the best colleges and universities that offer graduate and post-graduate science and engineering programs, many of which include more specialized studies in audio engineering and acoustics.





INTERNATIONAL





Delft University of Technology


http://www.english.tudelft.nl





Imperial College London


http://www3.imperial.ac.uk





Institute of Sound and Vibration Research


http://www.isvr.soton.ac.uk





Technische Universiteit Eindhoven


http://w3.tue.nl/en/





University of Essex


Department of Computing and Electronic Systems


http://www.essex.ac.uk/dces





University of Salford


Acoustics, Audio and Video Group


http://www.acoustics.salford.ac.uk





University of Sydney, Australia


http://www.usyd.edu.au





NORTH AMERICA - CANADA





University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada


Audio Research Group


http://audiolab.uwaterloo.ca





NORTH AMERICA - UNITED STATES





California Institute of Technology


http://www.caltech.edu





Georgia Institute of Technology


http://www.gatech.edu





Massachusetts Institute of Technology


http://web.mit.edu





Northwestern University


http://www.northwestern.edu





Pennsylvania State University


College of Engineering


http://www.engr.psu.edu


Graduate Program in Acoustics


http://www.acs.psu.edu





Stanford University


http://www.stanford.edu





University of California, Berkeley


http://www.berkeley.edu





University of Colorado at Boulder


http://www.colorado.edu





University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign


http://www.uiuc.edu





University of Texas at Austin


http://www.ece.utexas.edu





University of Wisconsin-Madison


http://www.wisc.edu


 
Reply:In Canada, the most famous research site is at the NRC's Institute for Microstructural Sciences (See link). Speaker design appears to fall between physics, electrical and mechanical engineering and psychoacoustics.





Canada has a number of world class speaker manufacturers and many got their start through key staff who began life at NRC.





Different universities house acoustics in different areas. A Google search (acoustics+university) showed, for example, U of Texas has in mech engineering (link 2). U of Salford (UK) has a special group (3rd link), as does Penn State (4th link).





Hope this helps.