For the fourth and final installment of our Tech Talk series, Mr. Peavey talked about one of the most important—and most fragile—links in the audio chain: the loudspeaker.
In the April 2012 issue of Music Alive!, guest columnist Hartley Peavey—founder and CEO of Peavey Electronics Corporation—talked about what makes up an “audio chain” and discusses that chain’s weakest link: the loudspeaker. For this fourth installment of Tech Talk with Mr. Peavey, we’ll delve into a little more detail about loudspeakers, which can be fragile but are also crucial to producing amplified sound.
The photo you see here is of a Peavey field-replaceable loudspeaker; some components have been separated so you can see them better. On the bottom of the picture is a rigid metal frame, which holds both a cone made out of paper (you can see it in the frame’s gaps, which look a little like small windows) and a voice coil made of metal wire (that’s the shiny part in the middle of the frame). Above the frame is a fixed magnet, which is normally attached to the frame with three bolts. When electrical current runs into the voice coil in close proximity to the magnet, an electromagnetic field is created. The coil then moves in response to fluctuations in the current—created, for example, by the signal coming from an amplifier. Those movements of the coil in turn push the paper cone back and forth, converting electrical energy into sound.
In this exclusive video, Mr. Peavey demonstrates how the components of a loudspeaker work together and explains why loudspeakers are the weakest link in the audio chain.