I am intrested in building speaker element for my lo-fi experiments.
What is the simplest way of building your own speaker element... and if posible with standard household items or something other easily awailable materials.
Distorion or bad signal to noise ratio is not an issue. I really WANT to have unlinearities and audible distortion. As long as speech is even remotely understandable there can't be too much distorition.
I am intrested in diffirent type of elements... Is there an easy way of buildin simple lo-fi ribbon? simple lo-fi Moving-coil?
Does anybody know anythong about Nikola Tesla's or Alexander Graham Bell's fist ideas as speaker elements? I Know they are fron 19th centyry so they can't be that complicated?
What is the simplest way of building your own speaker element... and if posible with standard household items or something other easily awailable materials.
Distorion or bad signal to noise ratio is not an issue. I really WANT to have unlinearities and audible distortion. As long as speech is even remotely understandable there can't be too much distorition.
I am intrested in diffirent type of elements... Is there an easy way of buildin simple lo-fi ribbon? simple lo-fi Moving-coil?
Does anybody know anythong about Nikola Tesla's or Alexander Graham Bell's fist ideas as speaker elements? I Know they are fron 19th centyry so they can't be that complicated?
Mursu said:
One of the simplest ways to get a real "kitchenoid" speaker is the ever so (in)famous "Tin Can Driver". Grab a bigger (already opened and empty) tin can, approx 2-3 inches in diameter. Get a large inductor of a couple of mH, and a power-resistor of ~4 ohms. Wire the coil & res. in series and connect to your amp. (nominal impedance then 4 ohms, very HiFi conforming...)
Place the coil right near the bottom of the can, leaving only a small space of ~1mm so these just don't touch. Turn on the music...
A variation of the above would implement drilling a small hole into the middle of the can bottom, mounting a lengthy steel screw through that hole and placing the coil centered "around" that screw...
(The more scientifically interested readers may now speculate about resulting K2...)
There is a high end variation of this, implementing a 12V toy train transformer, a diode, two capacitors (one too small, the other of unknown value), a few resistors and one 2N3055 on an aluminum plate, with the coil as collector load of the 3055 at approx 0.5 Amps , thus giving you: pure class A tin-cannage! But never use any bridge rectifier, just one diode, else you will be accused of severe overkill! I successfully did that once as a kid, your mileage will vary though...
It should also be noticed that there are significant differences in sound quality, depending on the initial stuff that tin can contained. Some examples:
- Oil can: greasy mids
- Peaches: smooth treble
- Beans: farty bass
regards & have fun!
Got an old Hard Disk Drive you can take apart?
How about hooking up an amp to a HDD seek arm coil? should work and may be very interesting for speech sounds.
The mechanism that moves the arms on a hard disk has to be incredibly fast and precise. It can be constructed using a high-speed linear motor.
Many HD drives use a "voice coil" approach -- the same technique used to move the cone of a speaker on your stereo is used to move the arm.
How about hooking up an amp to a HDD seek arm coil? should work and may be very interesting for speech sounds.
The mechanism that moves the arms on a hard disk has to be incredibly fast and precise. It can be constructed using a high-speed linear motor.
Many HD drives use a "voice coil" approach -- the same technique used to move the cone of a speaker on your stereo is used to move the arm.
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Joined 2004
Not a speaker project, but very lo-fi:
For a funny vocoder effect you can speak very closely in front of a house cooling fan (in Finland hmm...). To record just speak against the wind direction and place the microphone in the opposite side. Sing in a monochordic tone something like "Autobahnnnnnnnnnn" or "By your command". Changing the speed of the fan will change the modulating tone, too.
Hope this helps.
For a funny vocoder effect you can speak very closely in front of a house cooling fan (in Finland hmm...). To record just speak against the wind direction and place the microphone in the opposite side. Sing in a monochordic tone something like "Autobahnnnnnnnnnn" or "By your command". Changing the speed of the fan will change the modulating tone, too.
Hope this helps.
This brings me back. When i was 11 or 12 I was learning about loudspeakers, and I learned about this ribbon. I wondered how this thing worked? So what i did was take a wrigley's gum wrapper rip off the paper after soaking in hot water. then take the most powerful two magnets you can get ahold of or even just one. Then place the ribbon near these magnets but make sure your amp is at low volume. The sound is surprisingly clear. Definately enough for voice intelliigabilty and will probably be your most sucessful expermient. You can then experiement with magnet positions, folding the diaphram in a V shape etc. To increase the resistence of the ribbon take a long coil of wire 30gauge or smaller and put it in series with the ribbon. You'll probably need to do this to prevent your amp from self reseting itself. Or you can use a 4 or 8 ohm dummy load resister with the ribbon your testing.
Good luck.
Good luck.
perhaps you could make a small stationary coil, mounted to a base of some sort, get one of those small powerful earth magnets, attach it to a spacer(rod of equal diameter to extend a half inch or so out of the coil), connected to a paper plate that is cut to shape of cone for rigidity. Play music in the coil and hold the magnet inside it. I guess this would be like a reversed speaker, eh?
Re: Re: DIY lo-fi speaker element
Intresting... I have one O-shaped magnet... But you are talking about electrical magnet?
Cool... I have to try that one. Thank you. That might be just what I am looking for.
Sounds intresting... In practice? What do I have to do?
Actually that speach thing was just an example... I would like to overdrive my analogue synths and other stuff... But yes... I have allready experimented with diffirent kinds of microphones... And destroyed couple of those too... very interesting efects and organic distortion.
Hmm.... Variation of Stocker's vision. What kind of magnet do I need?
Yes... That thing is very familiar... If my amp had used disposable fuses I could not affort this hobby of mine.
Thank you all...
I found this one from Wikipedia:
Reis' speaker worked by magnetostriction. In his first receiver he wound a coil of wire around an iron knitting needle and rested the needle against the "F" hole of a violin. As current passed through the needle, the iron shrank and a click was formed. The image shown below is a more advanced version where the iron bar is clamped to a cigar box shaped resonator. This receiver is very insensitive; it produces weak sound but has good fidelity. It requires very high current and is a current sensitive device rather than a voltage sensitive device. Reis was marginally successful. This instrument could transmit continuous musical tones but produced indistinct speech.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reis'_telephone)
With modern aps that should work fine?
Stocker said:
Intresting... I have one O-shaped magnet... But you are talking about electrical magnet?
redunzelizer said:
Cool... I have to try that one. Thank you. That might be just what I am looking for.
dnsey said:
Sounds intresting... In practice? What do I have to do?
infinia said:
Actually that speach thing was just an example... I would like to overdrive my analogue synths and other stuff... But yes... I have allready experimented with diffirent kinds of microphones... And destroyed couple of those too... very interesting efects and organic distortion.
angsuman said:
Hmm.... Variation of Stocker's vision. What kind of magnet do I need?
Yes... That thing is very familiar... If my amp had used disposable fuses I could not affort this hobby of mine.
Thank you all...
I found this one from Wikipedia:
Reis' speaker worked by magnetostriction. In his first receiver he wound a coil of wire around an iron knitting needle and rested the needle against the "F" hole of a violin. As current passed through the needle, the iron shrank and a click was formed. The image shown below is a more advanced version where the iron bar is clamped to a cigar box shaped resonator. This receiver is very insensitive; it produces weak sound but has good fidelity. It requires very high current and is a current sensitive device rather than a voltage sensitive device. Reis was marginally successful. This instrument could transmit continuous musical tones but produced indistinct speech.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reis'_telephone)
With modern aps that should work fine?
Mursu said:
see attached pic
Measure the coil resistance with an ohm meter should be 10 to 20 ohms or so. May have to limit low freq for best results try using a series non polar cap 2 - 10 uF. Sound will come from platter as the head touches there> the platter is not spinning for this experiment.
Attachments
use the cardboard tube from a roll of toilet paper as a former, wind a bunch of magnet wire around it to make a voice coil, hot glue to the bottom of a disposable styrofoam plate. Put the voicecoil over a stack of ring magnets.
saw this at science fair at my kids' school, worked pretty well.
saw this at science fair at my kids' school, worked pretty well.
Mursu said:
Speakers back in the day were armature type (moving magnet), and would probably be harder to make.
The easiest ribbon is a bit of very thin aluminum foil, pleated and stuck between two magnets. You will need a transformer because the impedance is very low. The impedance ratio is teh turns ratio squared, so if you wanted to multiply the impedance by 100, you would need a transformer that had a 10:1 turns ratio. For low fi duty, I suppose you could try (for starters) a mains power transformer that reduced the mains voltage by 10. Don't blame me if you blow up your amp, though.
The easiest moving coil speaker is a tube connected to a diaphragm of some sort. wrap a number of turns of wire (calculate length by DC resistance) around the tube at the bottom, then place the tube around a high strength magnet, suspended by some folded paper "springs". (stretched strings also make fair suspensions, but require a better frame) The surround (if you want one) is a bit harder to manage, I suppose you could glue stretch kitchen plastic or window film to the edges of the diaphragm, and use a large bowl, with cutouts in it, for the frame.
Have fun!
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