How to Understand the Way That Speakers Work
Before it is really possible to understand how speakers work, it is first necessary to understand how sound works.
How Sound Works
Humans are able to pick up sound due to a very thin piece of tissue in their ear that is commonly known as the eardrum. When the sound waves reach the eardrum, it vibrates and sends signals to the brain, from there the brain can then interpret the vibration as sound.
Although sound vibrations can travel through liquid and solid objects, it most often travels through air, which is how people experience sound from speakers. The way this works is that the sound waves vibrate air particles; at this point the air particles move particle disturbance through the air. The vibrating air particles send a fluctuating wave of pressure through the atmosphere until it reaches your eardrum. As the eardrum vibrates, it sends the sound signals to your brain.
How Speakers Work
When sound is recorded with a microphone or other recording device, is works much like the eardrum; it picks up the sound vibrations and converts them into electrical signals, and then either records it as data, or sends it to the speaker.
When electrical signals are sent to a speaker, what is happening is that the speaker is converting those electrical signals back into physical vibrations that will create sound waves. If the system is working correctly, the sound that comes out of the speakers will be nearly identical to the sound that went into the microphone or recording.
The speaker translates the electrical signal when it rapidly vibrates a flexible cone, and a signal is sent through the voice coil. To amplify the sound, it is constantly fluctuating the electrical current between a positive and negative charge. This moves the voice coil back and forth, which then vibrates the cone to recreate the sound waves that reach your ears.
Because the different speakers create difference sound frequencies, to recreate high quality sound it is necessary to have different types of speakers; this is why you will find that most good speakers have a woofer and a tweeter, all within the same compartment.
When looking for high quality speakers, it is important to pay attention to the design of the speaker enclosure. The design of the speaker enclosure will influence the final output; you will want an enclosure that provides good quality sound reproduction.
The most popular is the sealed enclosure, which is completely sealed and forces the sound out from the speakers into the room. The disadvantage of the sealed speaker enclosure is that it is not as efficient as some of the other designs, and requires a boost in the electrical signal to produce good sound, as there is no method of equalizing the air pressure.
Other speaker enclosures, such as the bass reflex enclosure, or the passive radiator enclosure are designed to overcome the air pressure by redirecting it out of a small port that is built into the speaker.
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Tags: audio, audio technology, hear, music, sound, sound waves, speaker stands, speakers, stereo speakers