Speakers are the key that all sound system depend on unlock the gate to ultimate quality. Take the best quality recording on the most advanced CD, MP3, etc., and play it with a top-of-the-line sound system and amplifier and it will still sound horrible if the system is using poor quality speakers. It doesn't matter if they are used for work, playing computer games or listening to music; all speakers do the same job. A speaker translates electrical signals on CDs, tapes, DVDs, hard drive, etc. back into sound we can actually hear. Most people don't care how a speaker works, as long as it works the way they want it to, but for those that want the best quality out of their music; it is at matter of understanding how a speaker works and why they produce different sound qualities.



Eardrums react to changes in air pressure, keeping that in mind, speakers were designed to transform electrical signals that they receive into waves of air pressure that fluctuate. The ear picks up on these waves of air pressure, known as sound waves, and translates them into signals that our brains can understand; things sound differently depending on their sound waves frequency and amplitude.

A computer uses a sound card as an access center for multimedia stored on the hard drive in order for the sound card to correctly access the right file at the right moment, it requires a driver. The driver is firmware that instructs the sound card on which files to access and when; the sound card sends electrical signals to the speaker, which rapidly vibrates a flexible cone, known as the diaphragm.

A speakers' driver is different from a computers in the fact that it is not firmware, a speakers' diaphragm consists of: the diaphragm, the basket, the suspension, the spider and the voice coil. The materials of choice for the diaphragm are usually paper, plastic or metal, the diaphragm is attached at the wide end to the suspension. The basket is a metal frame; the suspension is a flexible material that is attached to the basket as the inner rim that allows the cone to move. A second ring of flexible material, known as the spider, is also attached the basket; the spider allows the coil to move back and forth freely, while still holding it in place. The coil is also attached to the narrow end of the cone and is known as the voice coil. Some drivers have a diaphragm that does not taper in, but instead extends out, giving it a dome shape instead of a cone.

The first speaker created was a loud speaker in Germany; the loudspeaker was created and patented by Ernst Siemens on Dec. 14, 1877. It was another 47 years before two researchers, Chester W. Rice and Edward Washburn Kellogg, created the modern moving coil speaker and had it patented in 1924, but the first acoustic speaker was not created until 1952 by Henry Kloss and Edgar Villchur.