Wow! Circular speakers look cool

You have to admire anyone who builds speakers from Ikea salad bowls. That's what this group of semi-bonkers Princeton people did, before moving on to a combination of MDF and car stereo speakers. For some reason, they seem very popular with chaps playing experimental stringed instruments. Why? Because they "provide a complex and fruitful alternative to the traditional paradigms of sound production".

Posted by Tom Whitwell.

Comments:

There is a group at UC Berkeley that is working on a similar project:

http://www.cnmat.berkeley.edu/SpeakersLast I heard they were working on a 50-driver version.

The idea is that by changing the phase lag for the different sides of the speaker, they can create different spatial patterns of the radiated sound. This can allow them to emulate different instruments (violins, for example, have a very complex spatial pattern). They can also "steer" the sound to differnet parts of the room, giving a rich "stereo" feel from a single source.

# posted by

Kelan : 2:34 am