Who remembers 2 foot sphere speaker

Over the years there have been several people making dodecahedron speakers. These weren't true sphere, but instead had 12 facets with a driver mounted in each.

Hi Coolin,

Soundsphere makes that kind of speakers:
http://www.soundsphere.com/html/products.htm

Steven

BBN Network Technologies makes a dodecahedron that is OEM'd by Bruel and Kjaer that is used for making noise reduction measurements, but I don’t think that’s the one your thinking of.

A while back at an AES I saw a presentation of some dodecahedrons that were built with Tannoy LGM-8 drivers. They weren’t a Tannoy product, just used the drivers. I think it was intended to do the same work as the BBN/B&K product.

I had the experience of listening to some speakers similar to what I think you were describing some tome ago. They were made by a japanese company. I think I first saw them around 1990, the letening expereince was around 1995. They had a big rack of DSP processing that went between the source and amplifiers to do some sort of special spacial enhancement. I wasn’t as impressed as the "specialists" who seemed very excited about them.

The room also had a set of JBL 4412 in it that I thought sounded much better.

I just found this web site:
http://www.oddnoise.com/spheres.html

This is a photo of the Bruel and Kjaer 4296:

Well I give up, cant find them anywhere. I recall they were black spheres. They had a dozen or more transducers that I think I was told were Pioneer car speakers. I think they used speakeron connectors and stood on three black metal rods that mounted to a plate.

Dont try this at home:

Seems that you are describing a black VW Beetle MkII set up as a boom car. How many Pioneer speakers again?

ensen.

Hi Coolin,

I know of a real existing spheres but have no pictures. Those are located at the acoustical department of the technical university in Delft for demonstration purposes. And indeed over 2 feet diam and completely covered with 10 cm full range speakers. How do they sound? Well for large orchestra work these sound great but a single singer sings with a mouth of over 2 feet wide

Cheers

He found! They have made a new and smaller one:




Larger picture (145 kB)

Hi Co,

No, that is not the one I’ve heard. It is just a picture of a similar one I finally found on the TUD’s web site. I’ve heard the 2 feet ones you are possibly referring to. That ones were indeed painted white and there was a huge amount of small speakers mounted. I’ve heard them in a larger lecture room at the TUD some 10 years ago.

If you are still interested, maybe you can find some e-mail entries here:

http://wwwak.tn.tudelft.nl/index.html

These 2 feet speakers will be somewhere around there I think. And for sure they were DIY by some students at the TUD

Cheers

Hi. Check out this site:
http://www.wolcottaudio.com/WA_omni.htm

It's not too detailed, and doesn't even have a full picture of the speaker, but it meets your description pretty well.

Lenses are neat, having heard early desgns from these guys (about 20 years ago) Im very interested in these:

http://www.sawonline.com/overview.shtml