Speaker Facts

This is a place for facts about speakers. I know a lot about speakers since I have been working with them for over 30 years. However, I'm still learning all the time and there are a lot of things I don't know. This is a place where I can spread facts as I know them and learn more, as well.
You will want these speaker facts in order to better enjoy listening to your speakers.
I will tell you some of the basic facts about loudspeakers so that you can get the most out of them.

Its not enough to just hookup your speakers with any speaker wire or speaker cable and put them anywhere. The speaker wire you choose can make a big difference in the sound you hear. Speaker cable and speaker wire are two terms for the same thing. The size of the wire and the length work in conjunction with the speaker impedance (more about that later) and the amplifier.

Common speaker sizes range from 1 inch to 21 inches in diameter.
The size of the speakers also plays an important role in how they sound. In general, the bigger the speakers are, the more bass you will get. That's because sound is produced by moving air and a speaker is a piston that vibrates the air in front of it. Bass sounds are made by moving large volumes of air tens or hundreds of times per second. Treble sounds are made by moving smaller volumes of air thousands of times per second. High frequency sounds are produced by smaller speakers because they can move faster and therefor produce higher frequencies more efficiently.

Along with the size of the speaker is the design of the speaker box that its mounted in. This is of critical importance when dealing with bass. It is much less important for highs. Most speaker box design is concerned with the bass response only. That's because highs tend to radiate directly into the air while bass notes work very closely with the air within the box and go out into the room in all directions. Speaker box design is a very interesting subject for those contemplating building their own systems. Its not difficult to build a speaker box. The tricky part is making a small speaker box that has good bass response.

Car speakers are a completely different subject than home speakers or musical instrument speakers. A car is a small space that doesn't have enough room to let speaker waves develop before they start bouncing around. There's also a lot of background noise to overcome in a car.
If you want high fidelity sound reproduction in a car you might as well use headphones, but you might be putting yourself in danger if you're driving, which goes for loud speakers as well.
A pair of small speakers in the dashboard and a small subwoofer is about all you really need to get pretty good sound in a car.

There are a dizzying number of speaker brands out there and the quality is subjective but its safe to say that the older solidly established companies can be trusted to produce the better sounding speakers. Especially if you want to save money, the tried and true brands generally will come up with the best sounding budget models because their reputations are at stake.
If you want to know about Altec or JBL speakers go see the Lansing Heritage Forum. These along with Electrovoice are some of the best speakers ever made.

I have been working with speakers most of my life as a musician and audio engineer so I have had the opportunity to listen to a vast number of speakers. I've also been responsible for making them work at their extreme limits in high pressure situations. I would like to present you with the speaker facts as I know them and point you in the right direction to learn everything you can so that you can enjoy listening as much as possible.