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J

John Popelish

Jan 1, 1970
0
hi i just want to know that why wood is used to make the speakers ?why
not plastic?

Wood has higher strength and stiffness to weight ratios than
plastics do.
 
E

Eeyore

Jan 1, 1970
0
John said:
Wood has higher strength and stiffness to weight ratios than
plastics do.

I suspect it's naturally better damped (less resonant) too.

Graham
 
T

Tim Wescott

Jan 1, 1970
0
hi i just want to know that why wood is used to make the speakers ?why
not plastic?
"Plastic" covers a pretty wide range.

I suspect that it's because for the price, wood delivers good acoustic
properties for the price. I also suspect that it's because there's a
bit of voodoo in high-end acoustic design, and wood appeals to the
liquid-nitrogen-dipped-vacuum-tube crowd more than cruddy old plastic does.

I also know of many cheaper speaker enclosures that are made of
pressboard, some small but good-sounding speakers that are made of die
cast aluminum (re. Bose), and some small but good-sounding speakers with
labyrinths that are made of plastic (Bose again).

--

Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com

Do you need to implement control loops in software?
"Applied Control Theory for Embedded Systems" gives you just what it says.
See details at http://www.wescottdesign.com/actfes/actfes.html
 
M

Michael Black

Jan 1, 1970
0
hi i just want to know that why wood is used to make the speakers ?why
not plastic?

Note that you can find many "mini stereos" that have plastic boxes
for the speakers. And of course, any boombox uses plastic.

It's not so much the material, as the quality. Cheap wooden speaker
boxes will rattle and shake, while strong wood boxes won't. Cheap
plastic, and the same problem, strong plastic less likely. Metal
can have its own problems, but also done properly make good speakers.

Apart from anything else, wood is an easy material to work. Plastic
requires a process that isn't so economically feasible unless you
are making a lot, the setup costs is too much.

In the old days, when there was a variety of hobby electronic magazines,
speaker construction articles were common. All kinds of material were
used. Cardboard boxes, though they were reinforced and sealed up
well. Concrete sewer pipes. Ironically, some of those could afford
to use out of the ordinary things that supplied a nice strong box,
because unlike commercial endeavors, shipping the heavy materials
was not an issue, and someone building their own could live with what
others might consider "ugly".

The box in itself means nothing. It's there to make sure the sound
comes out of the front of the speaker (and any port, if there is one),
rather than from all over. You don't want the box to get in the way
of the sound (or want the effect to be as limited as possible).

Michael
 
B

Bob Masta

Jan 1, 1970
0
hi i just want to know that why wood is used to make the speakers ?why
not plastic?

Actually, real wood is not such a great material for speaker boxes.
The preferred material is Medium Density Fiberboard (MDF) which
is a wood composite. It is quite dense and "dead", which is ideal
because you don't want the box itself to vibrate, only the air inside
it. (It just happens to be inexpensive as well... one of the very few
instances where cheaper is better!) I suspect if you look carefully,
you'll notice that many speakers that look like real wood are really
wood *veneer* over MDF.

Plastic is actually not so bad for those tiny little computer or ipod
speakers, since they are small enough so that it's easy to get a
fairly rigid plastic structure just by shaping it properly. Panels
that appear flat on the outside can easily have ribs internally to
keep them rigid. This same method would undoubtedly work on
a full-sized enclosure, but the higher forces and lower frequencies
that we expect from full-sized speakers would mean that the
reinforcements would be prohibitively large, heavy, and expensive to
mold.

Best regards,


Bob Masta

DAQARTA v3.50
Data AcQuisition And Real-Time Analysis
www.daqarta.com
Scope, Spectrum, Spectrogram, Signal Generator
Science with your sound card!
 
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