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Hey, I Like the Sound of That!

Most of us in the developed world are familiar with audio speakers.

How many wonderful hours of listening have they provided, at least since 1925.

Of course, in 1925, we would have been listening to a Victor Orthophonic player WITH HORN. But still, in 1925, that device was considered miraculous.

"The Victor" was able to bring Caruso into ones living room. What a marvel! "Almost like being there at the Metropolitan Opera House," your guests would say in between mouthfuls of your carefully prepared and arranged buffet.

The Victor Orthophonic was built into a credenza; one would open the doors on the front of the piece to hear the sound emanating from the horn built into the cabinet.

In 1925, audiophile competition was already stiff. For example, your next door neighbor, who had bought a Brunswick Panatrope, would tell you without being asked that the sound coming from your horn was distorted at a distance of five feet, whereas the Brunswick didn't have that problem. You would counter, "At sixteen feet, the Victor produces a sweet spot that the Brunswick is incapable of." .....and so forth.

We humans have always been proud of our relative technical sophistications....of possessing the latest civilization has to offer. Show and tell contests go way back to the first club used by the first Neanderthal. One Neanderthal would choose a club made of Oak. Another, a club of Ash. The arguments regarding which was superior normally ended when one or both of the debaters lost a round with a saber tooth. The saber tooth was often unimpressed with the quality of either club.

Back to audio speakers.

In 1926, Bell Labs produced the Vitaphone sound system which was the first device to use the moving coil. With its Western Electric speaker driver, coupled with a one inch horn, the sound efficiency improved decidedly over older designs.

Then in 1928, for the first time, an inventor named Herman Fanger ("Fangs" to his friends) designed a speaker with a diaphragm nested inside and in front of the traditional cone loudspeaker. With this arrangement, fairly true high frequency sounds could be produced by the center cone with a diaphragm made of stiff, light material; and lower pitch sounds could be accurately produced by the outer portion of the cone with a diaphragm made of more flexible material.

Only one year later, 1929, Westinghouse developed a horn type loudspeaker that purposely directed sound toward the audience, and the speaker audiophile was born. Sweet spot here we come!

In 1933, all heck broke loose. Stereo!

A demonstration was announced by the National Academy of Sciences. Guests were invited to Constitution Hall in Washington D.C. in the spring of that year.

The transmission to be heard was from the Academy of Music in Philadelphia. Three channels were used with microphones at left, center and right of the orchestra stage. The mood was both joyful and tense. A real miracle was about to be heard. Never before had such a prestigious audience been witness to a live performance of an orchestra over a wire system which claimed to produce the sound faithfully, as if one were really present with the musicians.

In Washington, the expectant audience was looking at loudspeakers roughly positioned in the same way that the microphones picking up the sound were positioned in Philadelphia, that is, left, center and right of the orchestra stage.

The speakers used in Washington were created by Wente and Thuras (then deceased). The idea of the design was to produce a uniform response over the whole tonal range of an orchestra, then enhance the sound power without noticeable distortion, and finally emit the sound at all frequencies throughout a wide angle.

The demonstration was a wild success. Wente, jointly with Bell Labs (Thuras), were awarded a gold plaque by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences in 1936 for this successful demonstration. It was, of course, a boon to the motion picture industry. The industry could now promise audiences, at least from a sound perspective, that they would be placed in the middle of the Battle of Gettysburg. What a thrill! Purchase your tickets at the booth out front, please!

There were, of course, many refinements in audio equipment after 1936 and before the introduction of Sensurround sound. However, let's skip over these in the name of crisp prose, and proceed to the next truly gargantuan extravaganza after the Constitution Hall demonstration.

This took place on November 15th, 1974 at the LA Film Fest, when the film Earthquake with Sensurround sound was shown for the first time. Sensurround sound was produced by low frequency horns located behind the screen, two in each corner. One of the speakers in each corner was eight feet long, four feet wide, and four feet high. The other in each corner was a modular unit one foot wide and five feet wide. I'll leave it to you, the reader, to decide which of these speakers carried the lower registers, the ones that shook the man in the first row center out of his new suit.

Two additional horns were positioned on a platform in the rear of the theater, each horn driven by a 1000 watt amplifier, controlled by inaudible tones on a special optical track, along with the normal four tracks of the Panavision filmstrip. Patrons emerged from that performance SHAKEN but wild with enthusiasm. Purchase your tickets at the booth out front, please!

The next super audio attraction, Return of the Jedi in 1982, was the first motion picture exhibiting the THX sound system. This system was designed by George Lucas and Tomlinson Holman. Without getting too technical (since this writer doesn't have a clue beyond the basics), THX required a customized acoustical design for each auditorium. (Today, THX theater sound is typically produced with a several-dozen-speaker installation, a proprietary crossover network, and rigorous audio equipment specifications and performance standards......Whew!) Purchase your tickets at the booth out front, please!

In 1998, Benwin marketed the first flat panel designs to the general public.

Audiophiles have long ago forgotten about flat panel speakers, since flat panels cannot produce the listening "sweet spot" so desired by that group of sophisticated listeners.

Flat panel speakers are not to be confused with older planar magnetic designs however, which are sometimes (incorrectly) referred to as ribbons or flat panel speakers because they usually have a slim physique. Some of the planar magnetics are excellent.

Actually the best traditional speakers today produce sound better than someone sitting in the third row, left at Carnegie Hall, since most seats at live performances do not deliver full range sound without plenty of distortion.

Back to flat panel speakers.

To understand how flat panel speakers work, it's best to forget what you know about your living room speakers.

Any similarity with a traditional speaker vanishes once the signal hits the voice coil. There are no woofers or tweeters involved.

Flat panel speakers operate in a world of chaos called "psychoacoustics." In other words, the magnet-coil assembly moves so slightly that one cannot see it with the naked eye (40 microns). The rigid panel is just nudged to begin bending sound waves that travel literally in all directions.

The goal of traditional speakers is to produce sound faithfully.

Not so with the flat panel speakers. These speakers produce sound waves so diffuse that there is no perfect listening position so beloved by audiophiles.

On the other hand, with flat panel speakers, one can easily walk around a room and have the same sound levels throughout. This has many applications for public address systems and other applications that aren't competing for the 100% "presence" that audiophiles demand.

Finally in 2009, ToysPeriod introduced its BrickSpeak system. These speakers are incomparable, and cannot be described in prose. The sound BrickSpeak speakers produce must simply be heard to be appreciated. The ToysPeriod engineers are to be congratulated for their full range speaker design.

Ron - Toy Tech

Wednesday, 4:37 pm | September 23rd, 2009

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