Electronic – Surface Speaker

audiospeakers

Does anyone know what the technology in the "turn any surface in to a speaker" speakers is called?

It is all propriety, patent protected stuff and you just use pre made modules or is it possible to build it up from raw components?

Best Answer

There's not any special name for it that I know of. Vibration Speaker/Vibration Transducer/Surface Transducer. These names are all used interchangeably. It's simply the voice coil of a speaker with a mechanism to attach to a flat surface rather than having a cone attached.

Here is an article on the technology which is pretty much the same as speaker technology has always been:

http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/gadgets/audio-music/vibration-speakers.htm

And here is the transducer itself without as much plastic housing and markup:

http://www.parts-express.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?PartNumber=300-375

You could build it up from really raw components though. Magnet + voice coil + method to attach to surface.

I used to work in a speaker repair shop. During the reconing process, we would sometimes run the voice coil with the cone removed by hooking up a frequency generator to check for damage to the coil. A big enough speaker supplied with enough power would vibrate the bench. If the speaker had been attached securely, it would have the same effect as a Vibration Speaker.