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Speaker Driver Material & The Sound of Dissimilar Materials

Can anyone explain(NOT anecdotally)how it is possible for a driver made of metal(aluminum etc..)to properly convey the tone of wood & how a wood/pulp or plastic based driver can convey properly the tone of metal(electric guitar strings,cymbals)?This is a very confusing concept to me...
freediver
bdp24's avatar
bdp24
4,908 posts
 

You have a preconceived notion that the material of a driver has to naturally vibrate at the same frequency as the material of the instrument it is trying to reproduce---in other words, have the same resonance characteristics. That is such an incorrect notion, one doesn’t know where to begin to explain why. Where on Earth did you get that idea?!

To reproduce a single frequency (to make it simple), the driver moves forward and backward a certain number of times per second. What the driver is made of is (sorry) immaterial. It is the movement of the driver that creates sound, whether the driver is made of paper, plastic, metal, or wood.

The funny thing is, different materials DO have different sounds, to a degree. But that is a separate thing from what you are asking.

joey_v
455 posts
 
OP

i think you need to read up on acoustics and sound reproduction.

Drivers are meant to reproduce recorded sound, it doesn't act like the string of a guitar.
ohlala
993 posts
 
Soundwaves are what people hear in which there is a frequency and time element. Try investigating harmonics (distortion) and ASDR envelope.

There is difference between free vibration of an insturment and forced vibration of speaker. 
psag
450 posts
 
All of this is a good argument for multidriver speakers. A given driver, with its mass, stiffness, and many other properties, can handle only a limited range of frequencies convincingly. A single driver design can play coherently and pleasingly, but will only handle the midrange frequencies with authority.
gs5556
769 posts
 
The driver moves back and forth uniformly. It does not vibrate between two fixed points the way a guitar string or the spruce top of a cello does. Since the driver does not distort, it pushes and pulls air uniformly over the radiating surface so it doesn't matter to the air whether the driver is paper, aluminum, kevlar or any other material. The driver recreates the same pressure wave pattern as the vibrating top of the cello.

Sound waves are exactly what we hear for the waves are rarified and compressed air causing the eardrum to vibrate exactly like the source generating the wave.


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