Speaker is a device used to reproduce sound from an electronic device.
The speaking term is used in South America, Costa Rica, El Salvador and Nicaragua. While in the rest of the Spanish-speaking countries more loudspeaker is used.
It is also called loudspeaker, horn, bugle, speaker, loudspeaker.
The first production of loudspeakers began in the 20s of the last century.
Basic operation of a speaker
Speakers convert electrical waves into mechanical energy, and this is converted into acoustic energy. More technically, it is an electroacoustic transducer that converts an electrical signal into sound.
The speaker moves according to variations in an electrical signal and causes sound waves to propagate through a medium, such as air or water.
History of the speaker or loudspeaker
The first to install an electric speaker in his telephone was Johann Philipp Reis in 1861, which reproduced clear tones, although the human voice required revisions for its emission.
It was Alexander Graham Bell who patented the first electric speaker that was capable of emitting a clear human voice into your telephone in 1876. The following year there was an improved version by Ernst Siemens.
At this time Thomas Edison settled on the typical membrane-driven metal horn attached to the needle for his early phonographs.
Horace Short patented in 1898 a design for a speaker that was powered by compressed air; he sold the rights to Charles Parsons, who added several patents to it.
Few companies made audio disc players using compressed air speakers, including the Victor Talking Machine Company and Path. At that time this technology made a bad sound and they couldn’t reproduce low volume sounds.
The most widely used type of speaker today is the dynamic speaker, invented in 1925 by Edward W. Kellogg and Chester W. Rice.
General characteristics of a loudspeaker
A loudspeaker can be made up of one or more transducers (drivers or vias). To correctly reproduce a wide range of frequencies; many speakers employ more than one path. Each va reproduces different ranges of frequencies.
This division into channels (drivers), according to their frequency, the speakers are called:
* subwoofers: for very low frequencies
* woofers: low frequencies
* mid-range: middle frequencies
* tweeters, HF or highs: high frequencies
* super tweeters: for very high frequencies
In two-way loudspeaker systems, there is no mid-frequency path, so the task of reproducing these frequencies falls to either the woofer or the tweeter.
When multiple paths are used in a system, a filter called a crossover or crossover filter is used, which separates the input signal into different frequency ranges and guides them to the appropriate path.
Speakers as peripherals
A speaker is considered a peripheral output from a computer, tablet, notebook, or any other electrical device connected to it. The speaker can be built into the device or external to it.
The connection between the speaker and the device can be by cable such as jack, USB, RCA, XLR, DIN / Mini-DIN, BNC, DB25, Speakon, TosLink.
Or the connection can also be wireless via bluetooth, wi-fi or other radio waves.
Speaker Properties
– Frequency response.
– Impedance.
– Admitted power.
– Sensitivity.
– Performance.
– Distortion.
– Directionality.
Related article:
Piezoelectric microphones and speakers.
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Alegsa.com.ar (2018). speaker definition – ALEGSA 2018-05-16 url: https:///Dec/parlante.php
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