How do TINY speakers produce such BIG sound?

Paradoxically, it seems to me that these devices with the micro speaker have no space for anything like a horn. There is just a micro speaker and it is stuck to the iner surface of the hard plastic casing which has a series of seemingly inadequate perforations.

What exactly is a nano driver?

Google does not comes up much apart from the name of some Nano iPod and its software drivers. Or sets of golf clubs!

Alex Coleman wrote in news:Xns97C07183CDF9A71F3M4@127.0.0.1:

Exactly. :) While the sealed baffle is NOT the most efficient, at all, it does extend the bass response. If the case shell is hard enough, and the driver has a neodymium iron boron magnet (as is likely at that small size to increase efficiency), then the smaller the airflow through the case, the stronger the bass. I mentioned in another post the use of pulsed energy, compressing the sound such that the decays are more abrupt than usual, falling to a lower level than usual, leaving the attacks to stand out. That makes the sound 'punchier', and that allows a strong drive over shorter periods to allow power saving and some way to overcome the losses due to inefficient coupling. There may well be other tricks too, like the shifting of amplitude from the bass fundamental to the next few harmonics.

Alex Coleman wrote in news:Xns97C07204D1EE171F3M4@127.0.0.1:

Good question. Even if you add bose to the terms, then try again after changing to the Google suggestion of nonodrive, I don't see any different. Perhaps it's related to the term 'plug top' which wasn't in the training I was given 20 years ago, but seems to be both current and dating back 40 years. Whatever was wrong with 'plug and socket'? :) WHile we're at it, could these new terms mean that an incandescent lamp will be known as a 'bulb' to differentiate from a 'tube'? And if anyone has any advance warning of impending legislation/convention/regulation to cease calling a spade a spade, I'd welcome the head's up. That is all. >:)

I think it has to do with the frequencies you want to reproduce. To play bass frequencies you need to move more air masses. To play treble frequencies you don't need to move much air. Have you tried to play a techno song with your mp3 mobile? The drums are aweful. But the high frequencies are almost cristal clear. Never ask a good response to bass freqs in a 1/2"x1/2" speaker, I suppose...:-)

I built a "Klipschorn" from drawings one of my fellow engineers at Bell Labs drew up in 1950. With the popularity of stereo, it was hard to find a room with corners in the right place, but it made a wondrous sound! :-)

From my post of 5/6/06 "Speaker impedance":

".... I recall talking to Paul Klipsch, the inventor of the "Klipsch horn". This was a speaker enclosure about six feet tall and four feet wide that sat in the corner of a room and used the corner walls and floor as an extension of the horn. Paul contended that there was no such thing as a "small" low frequency wave."

I've often wondered what he might think of the speakers they're now offering under his name!

Virg Wall, P.E.

No it's about the other parameters of proper design.

A speaker housing and entire device cabinet that doesn't resonant. An amp circuit that can provide the necessary current without severe distortion. A speaker that can likewise handle it.

Many simply thought the size of the speaker was the main criteria when it is simply that small speakers are also more commonly very cheap ones. Someone could make a really low quality larger speaker, put it in a terribly resonant cabinet and drive it will too low a wattage amp and it too would sound terrible... though tend to have more bass.

What you say seems to make a lot of sense to me.

It seems also to be similar to what SRS Labs provides in their audio rendering products.

Ehnaced spatial rendering and sound impact

kony wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

No again. >:) He's right. There are two diverging methods now. You're talking about the pure form, the striving for true hi-fi, where basic techniques are refined.

THis thread isn't about that though. It's about how speakers small enough to have no chance of rendering real air moving capability without shaking themselves to brittle fatigued pieces, mounted in tiny sealed baffles that couldn't accept such movements without developing deap-sea pressures even if such air movemnt were possible from those little speakers, can still somehow produce good bass. All kinds of non-purist tricks must be used.

Actually, some of those tricks should be used even by the purists. The mani one being panning and balance set by delay and not only by varing the signal level. Try it with a flanger effect, set the feedback to zero, modulation off, and adjust the sub-millisecond delays slowly to afect an already-panned signal. This simulates the tiny delay our heads cause to incoming sounds (That's what the 'head related transfer functions' thing is about, btw). This, combined with subtle low-pass filtering, can make a signal pan well beyond the speakers.

There are several reasons why such tricks are not used in purist hi-fi:

1. Expense. Until recently, it's been prohibitive.
2. Subjectivity. The delay needed to make a degree of panning depends on ear and head shape.
3. The effect has been used as a gimmick, and has got a bad reputation in a purist context.

If I were designing a balance control for hi-fi based on this I'd have a main balance control that had a couple of smaller controls beside it, one for filter, one for delay. To set it up, pan main hard left, then adjust delay for making the sound go to best extreme for proper location left for whoever is going to listen. Check it again on the right, then use the main, then adjust the filter till it feels right. It's more complex than the usual set of controls, but not much. It's no good setting up digital poresets, a thing like that has to be as hands-on as the controls we've got used to over decades.

Not sure whether the bass enhancement thing counts so well for hi-fi use though. It might in active speakers though, where the aim is to match the power gain stage with the transducer to air coupling. When you have that much control over the output device, it probably can get hi-fi results for a small bookshelf system.

An extra point: If you can try that flanger experiment, set the amplitude on each channel the same. :) What's amazing about this, is the delay part of the panned signal can place the location further left without level difference than the level difference can do without the delay, even when the level is full in one channel and ABSENT in the other!

That should be enough to convince you. But you'll have to do it. Don't just take my word for it.

I'll take your word for it, because I will always be a purist and never wish for any digital REprocessing of the signal.

I built my own headphone/pre/power amps from scratch though, I'm pickier than most.

kony wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

Actually I don't either. :) No tone controls, only gain, and two Mackie HR828's (active near/mid-field monitors).

Where those effects really help (and where I learned about them) is in making music. When you use the delay panning carefully you can make very subtle stereo effects that are musically expressive, especially when using noises, close mic'd or ambient, as a source.

The delay panning isn't that bad an idea for general use though, if you've ever experimented with binaural stereo (a long-standing interest for many purists) you'll have already used it. As binaural stereo hasn't taken hold because it's too dependent on head and ear contours, it would have to have the kind of controls I suggest to make it useful to all. Not sure how this could be used to vary the delays in a stereo mix though, unless it be based on splitting the signal into several narrow bands and rebuilding to get the wavefronts aligned. There is a tool that does this, a BBE something, used to clarify poor phase in final mixes. That might be adapted effectively, but I haven't tried one so I have no idea.

About lack of bass, even these Mackies don't go down to the lowest octave, and it doesn't bother be, our hearing can enhance the fundamental without preprocess, so long as there's enough info to start with. By definition, missing the lowest octave means that ONLY the fundamental of those notes is actually 'missing'. :) And it's only attenuated a bit.

Um, typo, HR424.. No such thing as HR828 as far as I know..

Also, the reason I don't use tone controls isn't beased on the idea of them degrading the pure signal, it's purely that I get used to a sound in a room. If I want to get the balance I don't adjust them except in the crudest and most temporary situation. In stead I play some things I know really well, and shift things in the room if there's some horrible boom in a corner or something.

HR824. Finally... (Far too used to forums with edit buttons)

On a sunny day (Fri, 12 May 2006 05:10:23 -0400) it happened kony wrote in :

What system, i am curious, electrostatic, dynamic, dynamic wit ha coild in teh membrane? Or piezzo? I once build a smal ldynamic one.... when you find you need permanent magnet bias... Also did some experimenting with piezzo.

Is yours betetr what you can buy commercially? (mine was not).

/pre/power amps from scratch though,

Yes done that too.

Na I am not, listening on PC speakers to my music now:-)

Like the joke I remember from my long ago military training:

The instructor would tell the class that a piece of equipment was "air dropable." The more experienced instructors would anticipate the sea of raised hands and add in: "More than once!"

Dis someone mention horn? "Dig" these (scroll down)

Regards,

Boris Mohar

Got Knock? - see: Viatrack Printed Circuit Designs (among other things)

Apparently you have connected to another of those flawed interfaces to usenet. This is not a forum. Be aware that a complete world awaits you when you install a newsreader and connect to your ISPs newsserver. I suggest you try Thunderbird, from mozilla.org. Totally free, and available for many systems, including Windoze, Mac, Unix/Linux, etc.

CBFalconer wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com:

I'm using X-News, a Windows client. I'm not entirely missing the point. :) It's just that I get careless with typing at times, trying to keep up with a thought, and I miss typos and can't edit after posting. It used not to be a problem but I think my sight might slowly be failing.

I know it's technically possible for usenet to allow deletions, and possibly edits, but I think most systems don't allow it because it's easily abused.

I'll look at Thunderbird though, as X-News has some ghastly OS-crashing habits. Not that Firefox isn't free of GUI-affecting memory leaks, so Thunderbird might not be a guaranteed improvement over X-News if it uses common code with Firefox.

All of which is far too much off-topic info, but it might help people avoid making assumptions. :) Sorry, hard to resist that one..