Parts of a speaker and what they mean

Discussion in 'Speakers' started by Cspirou, Dec 25, 2016.

  1. Cspirou

    Cspirou They call me Sparky

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    Speakers vary quite a bit but I'm fairly confident that these three parts make up 99% of all speakers:

    Drivers - the part that actually makes sound

    Crossover - electrical network that filters the signal each driver receives

    Enclosure - box that holds everything together

    So my question is, how important is the contribution of each part? Can you get by on great drivers but a crappy enclosure(and vice versa)?
     
  2. Poleepkwa

    Poleepkwa Friend

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    I think one more part should be added. The designer that have the skill/experience to put the first 3 together.
     
  3. Priidik

    Priidik MOT: Estelon

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    It seems to me that one could put together incredibly expensive and top quality components to still sound like crap.
    The key part is missing, like Poleekwa said, matching/optimizing.

    If all is well thought out I think driver quality is most important and then comes crossover.
    Enclosure really depends on design. Open baffle hardly needs high quality ''enclosure''.
     
  4. Cspirou

    Cspirou They call me Sparky

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    I'm not talking in a DIY aspect but more like a "kick the tires" aspect. Yes the designer is important but I made this thread so people can recognize what certain things mean. I guess you could just buy whatever is signed by Andrew Jones or just base it on brand name but that doesn't help understand what factors to look for when shopping around.

    It's like buying a car based on "Honda" or "Ford" and ignoring the rest. I'm just asking what it means to have 4L vs 2L engine. Or diesel vs hybrid.
     
  5. Cspirou

    Cspirou They call me Sparky

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    Or to bring i back to audio. The Grado RA1 amp is $400 but it is basically a $40 CMOY. For that price you can get a Schiit Jotunheim. Grado is somewhat of a trusted name so I would understand someone buying the amp. But if you know a little bit about what it is I doubt you would choose the RA1 over the Jotunheim.
     
  6. Hrodulf

    Hrodulf Prohibited from acting as an MOT until year 2050

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    Drivers - the part that transforms electrical current into air movement

    Crossover - filters out incomming high level signal for each of the drivers, compensates for driver sensitivity differences, corrects electrical impedance for the whole system

    Enclosure - provides mechanically sound mounting for the aforementioned parts and what's more important - provides acoustical loading for drivers

    All of these parts are equally vital to make the best out of a speaker design.
     
  7. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    Using more drivers allows one to get away with using less expensive drivers. It's very hard to make a driver that covers wide parts of the audio bandwidth. Using more drivers increases crossover parts.

    Related to enclosure would be physical driver alignment. Bad driver alignment (crossover also plays into this) can result in screwy vertical polar response. There are also some tricks to open baffle. My last OBs had asymmetrical jagged wing structures in back (slight U frame) to flatten response of the inherent peaks and dips of an OB with centered drivers.
     

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