What are Speakers Made Of? what are speakers made out of?

Speakers have several parts, such as a frame, a magnet, an iron core, a voice coil, and a cone. The magnet and cone are fixed to the frame. The voice coil is a wire that is insulated and wrapped around a bobbin, while it is linking it to the audio source. The bobbin is connected to the cone and has a soft iron core. When the voice coil gets an audio signal, it moves back and forth, causing the cone to vibrate and create sound. The cone can be made from materials like plastic, paper, aluminum, fiber, or rubber. The speaker might be housed in a box made of MDF board. Let’s see what are speakers made of in detail in this study on Digimigia.

Core speaker components and their materials

Speaker components are found in various areas of life, playing a crucial role in the live music scene by giving us more control over what we hear and how we hear it. Whether you’re upgrading old speakers or starting from the ground up, speaker components make refurbishment simple and encourage DIY speaker projects for all budgets. What are speakers made of? Let’s check the speaker component materials one by one in the following part:

Diaphragm (cone) materials

The best speaker cone material can be made from various materials like plastic, paper, aluminum, and fiber. Each material has unique properties that affect on sound production of the speaker.

• Paper is the most widely used as the speaker cone material. It is made from a mix of wood, fibers, waxes, and resins. The paper is compressed in order to enhance its flexibility, while it is making the speaker more responsive. Because of this sensitivity, paper cones are typically used for higher frequencies, such as those produced by tweeters.
• Plastic cones are a cost-effective option that provides better sound-dampening features. Plastic is mainly found in budget speakers.
• Occasionally, aluminum and other metals are used for speaker cones. These metals lack flexibility, which causes vibrations to start and stop abruptly. Similar to plastic cones, aluminum cones usually have a limited frequency response. Aluminum is commonly seen in speakers for toys and small devices.
• Fiber is a high-quality material that offers excellent rigidity for a faster response to vibrations. It can accurately reproduce sounds across the entire frequency range such as both bass and treble tones.

Voice Coil and Bobbin Materials

One of the other speaker materials explained are wire voice coils that are constructed from various substrate materials for winding electric coils. A voice coil usually consists of copper wire wrapped around a bobbin. The bobbin can be constructed from materials like paper, aluminum, nomex, polyimide film, or fiberglass.

Magnet materials

Based on various sources, the speaker center magnet is primarily categorized into permanent magnets, electromagnetic magnets, and soft magnets.

• Permanent magnet steel is typically made from neodymium iron boron or cobalt, providing a stable magnetic field and a high magnetic energy product. When compared to the other two magnet types, permanent magnets offer greater sensitivity and faster response times, making them popular in tweeters and midrange speakers.
• Electromagnetic magnet steel consists of electromagnets and soft magnets, featuring high magnetic permeability and saturation magnetic induction intensity.
• Soft magnet is a material that has a high magnetic permeability, which can be modified by the strength of the magnetic field. It has a high magnetic permeability and causes minimal sound distortion, making it commonly used in high-quality professional speakers.

Suspension: surround and spider

Cone surround is typically made from cloth, different kinds of rubber, or foam. Sometimes, it is a molded extension of the cone body, created as a single piece with the cone. Besides acting as a lateral stabilizer, it also influences the speaker’s compliance, which affects the type of speaker it is. Low frequency speakers generally have a high compliance surround, while higher frequency speakers have a stiffer one.

The second suspension component might not be visible when the speaker is placed in its enclosure. This part is often referred to as a spider,that is usually made from thin pieces of cotton or poly-cotton treated with phenolic, shaped into a corrugated form to enable a spring-like movement.

Basket (frame) construction

Most speaker baskets are made from stamped steel or cast aluminum. Larger speakers usually use cast aluminum, but the choice of metal depends on the magnet weight the basket needs to support, its required strength, and the appearance of the front of the speaker.

Dust cap and grille materials

The grille serves to shield the cones and parts of a speaker from dust, moisture, heat, cold, and debris. It also contributes significantly to the speaker’s appearance. Ideally, there would be nothing in front of the cones for optimal acoustics, but that is often impractical. The grille can be made from plastic, metal, or fabric.

Why material matters in speakers?

When selecting a speaker, people usually focus on design and cost, but they seldom think about the material it is made from. Yet, the material of a speaker stand is crucial for the overall sound quality and experience. For example, materials such as concrete and metal tend to reflect sound more, while they are leading to a clearer and more defined audio experience. As a result, Digimigia tried to let you know what are speakers made of in this blog.