Hear That?

Another crucial component to any sound designer who, well, wants to make sound is the speaker. Although speakers come from a very simple concept of a cone and wire wrapped around an electromagnet, their complexity can be incredible. Today we will be looking at SoundLab's impressive Majestic 945 speaker but first we will take a look at exactly how a speaker works. Every speaker, from the ear buds that come with handheld FM radios to the gargantuan speakers used at a Lady Gaga concert, is built the concept of a wire wrapped around a magnet. Of course larger and more advanced speakers do improve on this concept yet the basic concept remains the same. As a summer camp counselor I built speakers with my campers that consisted of a Styrofoam bowl, a piece of paper, and a magnet wrapped with wire. The sound quality was not impressive as can be expected but the small speaker did play when plugged into a standard stereo system.

Speakers work by sending electricity through a coil of wire that is mobile within the speaker. As the electricity passes through the coil, the fixed magnet changes the direction of the flowing electricity causing it to vibrate back and forth. These vibrations are then amplified by the shape of the cone and the material stretched over this cone. When the transmitted signal becomes too complex for a single speaker to accurately output, a more advanced speaker with multiple cone/magnet combinations can be used to retrieve a better quality sound. Larger speakers can have a woofer for bass frequencies, a midrange driver for midtones, and a tweeter for the highest frequency. Each part takes a different section of the incoming frequencies and (hopefully) outputs it with a higher quality.

Check out the totally majestic Majestic 945 by SoundLab. Standing at 104inches and weighing in at a whapping 216pounds, the Majestic 945 can reach frequencies as low as 24Hz and as high as the ultrasonic frequencies. The human ear has a range of audible frequencies that begins at 20Hz and ends at 20000Hz. Therefore the Majestic 945 has you covered, even when it comes to frequencies only your dog can hear. SoundLab boasts the Majestic 945 as the “Storm Speaker” since it apparently is able to reproduce sounds as soft as rain drops as well as thunder claps realistically. The Majestic 945 employs a large plastic film diaphragm in order to create a more spacious sound that fills the rest of the space that the speaker is not. Think this speaker is right for you? A pair of these expertly crafted beauties can be yours for the low low price of just 32,470!



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Roberts, Rick. (n.d.). Sounds and vision. Retrieved from http://blogs.chron.com/soundvision/archives/2006/04/cutting_edge_sp.html