The history of very small hifi speakers and their evolution of cost and being taken seiously is interesting. Back in the 1970s there was a speaker called the David Visonik speaker which had quite good sound for it's size, which was only about 50% bigger than a pint of milk. It's price was in the hundreds and seemed high. Maybe it was the first example that manufacturers were pricing speakers based on what they thought their performance capabilities were, instead of what it cost them to build. The German company Braun produced some very small speakers around that same time, which seemed likewise expensive. Here stateside, Optimus (Radio Shack) produced an inexpensive 1 way speaker called the 0.5 which was smaller than a pint of milk. If you watched with the volume, you got a surprisingly big sound where the speakers totally disappeared. They disappeared far better than Minimus 7 speakers. They avoided having a crossover being a single driver speaker, and were unusually coherent without all the phase errors that a crossover introduces. Two of them stacked in each channel were preferred in a small bedroom on some music to Radio Shacks Minimus 7 speaker, which was impressive on voice presence (a peak) and bass definition as far down as they went (not that far), but that peak in the midrange that sounded cool on voice didn't sound so good on other things like acoustic guitars and piano, where it messed with the harmonics. It was an enjoyable little speaker overall though. They could have made it a much better speaker by letting the driver board jut out more, as the lips of the metal cabinet was likely the culprit for making the instruments sound so miniaturized with early reflections. The above mentioned Braun made speaker drivers were used in full size ADS speakers of the day. Their "sticky" dome midrange was their most famous driver. In retrospect among vintage collectors interested mainly in sound quality, the ADS L710 was prefereed to the upper model 810 and 910. I once was listening to a 910 in a showroom, and a guy who was a drummer was also listening and seated beside me. I commented on how tight the bass of the 910 sounded and he said "It has too much damping, a drum doesn't sound like a drum on those. A drum has resonance. He preferred his own Polk RTA 12. Polk speakers back then were not known for their bass being world class tight, (they were alright though), but it might have worked in their favor on some instruments like drum. One guy in the forums said he bought up a huge amount of old vintage ESS Heil Air Motion Transformers, which were used not only as tweeters back then, but reproducing some of the midrange too. He built a DIY array of a dozen or so of the drivers with no crossover. With 12 drivers sharing the volume they could sound particularly clean and could extend down into the bass. I wonder if I could have done that back then with my Optimus 0.5 speakers. Maybe I would have needed 20 stacked per side.
![ทุกครั้งที่หลับตา (Lucid Dream) - AYLA's [ Official MV ]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/4i1OBAQyv58/mqdefault.jpg)
The history of very small hifi speakers and their evolution of cost and being taken seiously is interesting. Back in the 1970s there was a speaker called the David Visonik speaker which had quite good sound for it's size, which was only about 50% bigger than a pint of milk. It's price was in the hundreds and seemed high. Maybe it was the first example that manufacturers were pricing speakers based on what they thought their performance capabilities were, instead of what it cost them to build. The German company Braun produced some very small speakers around that same time, which seemed likewise expensive. Here stateside, Optimus (Radio Shack) produced an inexpensive 1 way speaker called the 0.5 which was smaller than a pint of milk. If you watched with the volume, you got a surprisingly big sound where the speakers totally disappeared. They disappeared far better than Minimus 7 speakers. They avoided having a crossover being a single driver speaker, and were unusually coherent without all the phase errors that a crossover introduces. Two of them stacked in each channel were preferred in a small bedroom on some music to Radio Shacks Minimus 7 speaker, which was impressive on voice presence (a peak) and bass definition as far down as they went (not that far), but that peak in the midrange that sounded cool on voice didn't sound so good on other things like acoustic guitars and piano, where it messed with the harmonics. It was an enjoyable little speaker overall though. They could have made it a much better speaker by letting the driver board jut out more, as the lips of the metal cabinet was likely the culprit for making the instruments sound so miniaturized with early reflections.
The above mentioned Braun made speaker drivers were used in full size ADS speakers of the day. Their "sticky" dome midrange was their most famous driver. In retrospect among vintage collectors interested mainly in sound quality, the ADS L710 was prefereed to the upper model 810 and 910. I once was listening to a 910 in a showroom, and a guy who was a drummer was also listening and seated beside me. I commented on how tight the bass of the 910 sounded and he said "It has too much damping, a drum doesn't sound like a drum on those. A drum has resonance. He preferred his own Polk RTA 12. Polk speakers back then were not known for their bass being world class tight, (they were alright though), but it might have worked in their favor on some instruments like drum.
One guy in the forums said he bought up a huge amount of old vintage ESS Heil Air Motion Transformers, which were used not only as tweeters back then, but reproducing some of the midrange too. He built a DIY array of a dozen or so of the drivers with no crossover. With 12 drivers sharing the volume they could sound particularly clean and could extend down into the bass. I wonder if I could have done that back then with my Optimus 0.5 speakers. Maybe I would have needed 20 stacked per side.
Huh?.Just kidding.
LOL, will be back to regular programming shortly.