Up until now the posts in this series on speakers have generally been about the fundamental concepts and features that go into 99% of speakers. This post is about that last 1%.

Manufacturers are constantly trying to invent new products so that you’ll want to buy the latest-greatest thing. Some of these unique items fall into the “lame” category, but this first one is a great product. Read the rest of this entry »

A speaker array consists of multiple drivers within an enclosure, operating in the same band (there can be arrays of enclosures as well, but those are for pro-audio, not home-audio). Arrays are used to improve the performance of a speaker for a certain function. I’m going to cover two types of arrays: line arrays and bipole/dipole surround speakers. Read the rest of this entry »

Now that you know how Frequency Bands and Drivers affect speaker selection you can think about enclosure design. Enclosure design affects the bass response of the speaker, but not the other bands. The woofer (or subwoofer) uses the enclosure as an “acoustic spring” to improve the response of the driver, and some enclosure designs increase the efficiency of the driver at low frequencies. The 3 main enclosure factors that affect the sound are the size, the construction, and the configuration.

Size

The size of an enclosure dictates what size of drivers can work in it. As we discussed in part 3, a larger woofer will generally be able to reproduce lower bass (this is good!). The size of the enclosure also dictates Read the rest of this entry »

In part 2 of this series we discussed the basics of picking the best speaker for your specific application. So you went to Amazon or Parts Express and found exactly what you were looking for, right? Well if not, then keep reading. As I mentioned before, it’s very hard for a single speaker to do everything well. Speaker designers know this so they actually build speakers with multiple speakers within them. These individual speakers are called drivers. When you look at a speaker without the grill on you will usually see 2 or more drivers. A speaker with 2 drivers has a woofer (to produce the bass) and a tweeter (to produce the treble). Some speakers add in a third driver called Read the rest of this entry »

Now that you know some of the limitations that speakers have (see part 1 of this series) you should be educated enough to plan what characteristics might be important for your specific application. There is no one speaker that does everything well, so when you’re working on an audio system you’ll have to decide what aspects you want to compromise on, and what aspects need to be prioritized.

Below are the typical applications for home speaker systems, and what aspects I think need to be prioritized for each one. Read the rest of this entry »

The job of a speaker is to recreate sound. Some speakers are better than others at doing that job, and their costs vary greatly. This series is meant to help you understand the fundamentals of what speakers do, how they are designed, which type of speakers might match up well with your needs, and how your speaker dollar can be most efficiently spent.

The Basics

To understand how a speaker recreates sound, you first have to understand what it has to work with. When a recording studio wants to capture sounds they set up a microphone which feeds into a recording system (usually a computer). The microphone has a small diaphragm that vibrates when sound waves in the air hit it (just like the eardrum in your ear). When the microphone diaphragm vibrates it generates a small electrical signal on the cord going from the microphone to the recording system. The recording system records that electrical signal and it ends up being encoded onto some media such as a CD, DVD, or Blu-ray. When your CD, DVD, or Blu-ray player plays back the media it converts the information encoded on the media back into electrical signals for your home audio system to process. Your audio receiver will process those electrical signals, amplify them, and Read the rest of this entry »