"cannon" speakers

[progbuddy]

I have kept hearing about tube speakers, so I thought I would make some of my own :D. I'm going to use some Harmon-Kardon speakers (3 in. diameter, 1 in. head) and make a tube housing for them. I was going to add in my personal touch by adding a few modifications. I'll post pics later today or tomorrow.

[GT40_GearHead]

tube speakers, i dont get it 100%

some pics would help, so.... get off ya' a$$ and show us the new toy :D

[ajmilton]

I'll post pics later today or tomorrow.

patience :P they're supposedly coming

(or get off your own ass and google!
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=tube+speakers&btnG=Search
)

[GT40_GearHead]

my behind is to tired, so no geting up for a while

[progbuddy]

okay. I got an awesome pic w/ my Nikon D200 (lol i need to change the shutter speed :p).

Heres the tube speaker and the little amp (gets hot after a while, I might switch out that copper "strip" for a huge aluminum heatsink. These 5 watt speakers put out as much as my 180 watt subwoofer. The tube design is AMAZING. I think I'm going to mount them on the sides of my PC :D. Oh yeah, just as a test, I put a CD on the top of the subwoofer. The vibes pushed the CD off in about 3 seconds. I was like O.o.

I made the speaker with a soldering iron (to melt the plastics together around the edges), plexiglass, and 4" diameter tubing. The tubing fit right in, and i melted around the speaker where the "rim" is.

http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m29/vashthstampede98/DSC_0010.jpg

The sound is unbelievable!. I just have to finish the other speaker :p.

edit: I used dual layer speakers for this (up & down drive on each speaker) made by Harmon Kardon.

[progbuddy]

I have fine-tuned the sound quality, and now I've decided not to do the other speaker. The tube provides awesome bass, and the other speaker provides treble. Now I'm down to changing out a flimsy copper "heatsink" (really just a copper strip) with a CPU aluminum heatsink, sanding down the amp, and making a housing for the speaker head.

[samurai_crip]

I have kept hearing about tube speakers, so I thought I would make some of my own :D.

:D:up:

[GT40_GearHead]

if you can get your hands on a nother tube of acrilic and put it under the speaker, bend both tubes, and make U shaped, this way you would use both the up drive and the down drive of the speaker

[Slug Toy]

haha, i love it!

let me guess... you had to cut the tube to a certain length right? i cant remember what its really called... i call it resonant lengths... anyways if you cut a tube to an interval of a produced wavelength, it will amplify because of its resonant properties.

lets see if i can spit out some math here...

seems to me that the speed of sound is about 300m/s. our range of hearing is 20Hz to 20kHz.... so lets just say it spans the entire 20kHz.

so what you would probably want to do is use the middle value of 10kHz and make the tube according to that. heres where it gets fun, because you have to find the length of the wavelength. its easy though. wavelength=speed of sound/frequency. so then we say wavelength=300/10000 which equals .03 meters... 3 centimeters.

heres something beautiful... since we used 10kHz, we can make this work for 20kHz, 15kHz, 5kHz... and others if we make the tube long enough.... but lets look at the tube length itself first and then ill get back to this.

so one 10Khz wavelength is 3cm. that means that any tube that is a multiple of 3cm long will amplify it. so a 30cm tube, or a 90 cm tube, or a 240cm tube... all those will amplify because they're multiples of 3cm.

so now back to the other thing. we can cover more than just 10kHz by making the tube length just right. this means we should look at some more wavelengths. 20kHz is double the frequency of 10, so the wavelength is half which is 1.5cm. 5kHz is half of 10, so the wavelength is double... 6cm. 15kHz is 1.5 times 10, so the wavelength is 3/1.5 which is 2cm.

so now we have wavelengths of 1.5cm, 2cm, 3cm, and 6cm to work with. all we need to do now is find a tube length that is a multiple of all four of those wavelengths. 60cm works well. 60/6=10, 60/3=20, 60/2=30, and 60/1.5=40.... it all works. so that means a 60cm tube will amplify all four of our frequencies.

now what does all this mean? well my guess is that you may have found instructions on the internet giving a specific length to cut the tube to. this length is probably a length that will amplify the majority of the frequencies between 20Hz and 20kHz. not ALL the frequencies though. you would probably need a VERY long tube to accommodate all of them... just the majority will do anyways.

ill tell you what though. im going to write a quick program to find the length required to amplify all frequencies. we may be in for a nice surprise.. it may not be a completely unreasonable length.

hopefully the stuff i just said makes sense.... if not... well ill try to clarify... but im going to work on that program first.

[tybrenis]

Slug toy. You. Are. A. God.

[progbuddy]

I actually didn't cut the tubing to a certain length :p. I just made a couple of adjustments after i plugged them in for the first time. Whenever I heard a resonance, I would cut the tube a little shorter each time. I took about an inch off in the long run. Plus, you have to figure in the thickness of the plexi (1-2 mm), density, and such. I'm not really done yet. I was going to add a couple neat features.

[a.Bird]

Oh man, it's been so long since I've applied math to any real life concepts. I miss that. Slug Toy thank you so much for that wonderful mind tinkering experience. Progbuddy, great work on your "cannon" speakers. I'm really interested in this now as I've got a ton of low wattage speakers laying around that I have been ready to toss.

[progbuddy]

You could make a whole surround sound system with a bunch of low wattage speakers, small amplifier, and a bunch of plastic tubes. I did. I have one tube as a subwoofer, an extra speaker, and 2 more low watt speakers to finish it off.

[Slug Toy]

ok, i graphed things out. the wavelengths are not linear at all. its more hyperbolic. i managed to make a program that gave me all wavelengths for each frequency. so i had 19980 values produced. now the trick is to figure out how to average these to get a good all-round tube length. thats whats got me screwed up.... im using python and im having a heck of a time trying to cache all 19980 values as a list to be referred to.

ill tell you this for now though. the lower the frequency, the longer the tube needs to be. at 20Hz, the tube needs to be in multiples of 17.17m, yes METERS. at 20kHz, it has to be in multiples of 1.717cm.

i remembered something else too. look up fundamentals. for sound waves, there are fundamental increments for the wavelength at which amplification will occur, and it doesnt have to be the full length of the wavelength. there are certain ratios you need. i think it goes like this: 1st fundamental is the whole wavelength, 2nd fundamental is 1/2 the wavelength, 3rd is 1/4 the wavelength, 4th is 1/8... and so on. ive got to look this stuff up though, so give me a while.

ive really volunteered myself for a lot of work this time...

<EDIT> just as i thought, i was wrong about the fundamentals. no wonder it didnt seem right. the smallest you can go is to half a wavelength. im still reading...

[progbuddy]

I don't think many speakers will hit 20 Hz. omg, I have a story on this.


There was a factory that produced wavelengths of 4 Hz. Next to the factory, there was a farm. One by one, all the chickens on the farm died. The explanation? At 4 Hz, the chickens' brain cells were resonating :eek: .

LOL.

[Slug Toy]

thats completely possible. its been shown that low frequencies like 4Hz can put people to sleep... something about low rumbling just makes you tired.

now, in other news... this sucks!!! my program is a complete disaster. i have no idea how to get this thing figured out, and im not a python wizard by any means. its driving me crazy. i just cant take all those 19980 wavelengths and create a generalization without it being super complicated.

give me a while on this one. in the mean time... keep on trucking because if its working as good as you say it is... thats good enough i suppose. i just need to do what im doing because... i want to.

[Omega]

Haha. The human range of hearing is actually from 20Hz up to 44KHz.

Nice post, slug.

[Slug Toy]

yes, the range is up to 44kHz for a newborn... probably even higher too.. or at least the ability to sense it, maybe not actually hear it. i can still hear well above 20kHz myself... but most people cant. most people these days cant even hear to 20kHz actually. thank very loud headphones and earbuds and too much bass in your car for that.

ok, small update. as i expected, to take care of all frequencies, you need a very large length. my preliminary estimates are saying at least 1100km of tubing to satisfy just up to 20kHz. thats still probably too short too. so you see why theres dedicated speakers for highs, mids, and lows... way too much going on over the entire spectrum for it to be feasible to amplify everything at once.

i still cant give any exact measurements yet. i think i have to start dividing into bass, treble, and mid sections to make things reasonable. but still... you would need an 8.5meter tube at least for a subwoofer to work properly. wonderful eh?

[Aero]

hey progbuddy, you should try recording a sound from the speaker and putting it up online. If you need it hosted let me know I'll toss it on my site temporarialy.

P.S. I know its pretty pointless, seing as how microphones for PCs generally suck with sound quality :P.


Good job on the speaker though, you should light it up with some sound activated cathodes or LED's, then it would be pimpin.

[progbuddy]

hey progbuddy, you should try recording a sound from the speaker and putting it up online. If you need it hosted let me know I'll toss it on my site temporarialy.

P.S. I know its pretty pointless, seing as how microphones for PCs generally suck with sound quality :P.


Good job on the speaker though, you should light it up with some sound activated cathodes or LED's, then it would be pimpin.

i could get some LEDs and put them near the starting point of the tube... that would be kinda neat. I was thinking of putting them on the sides of my computer. I think that would be kinda neat.

[Slug Toy]

heres another idea for speakers too. use some aluminum foil to act as a sheet speaker. just run an analogue audio signal through it, with a magnet close to one side, and you should get some noise. probably good for the high pitch stuff.