Good quality tiny speakers

[benjius]

Hi All!

I'm building a tiny radio player around the Si4735 (does AM and FM !) my original plan was to use headphones only but a lot of people told me that It would be nice to have an internal speaker, ideal for those "social gatherings" and so on, Although I really hate the sound of those internal speakers the decision is not up to me any more.
I've been looking around (digi, mouser, farnell) and yes there are a LOT of tiny little speakers, but apart from the datasheets there is no real information about their sound quality and we know vendors always lie or exaggerate.
I know a lot of EE love to work with audio, not my case, I believe I've better chances of finding a good speaker by asking you.
Any good advice on this search ?

Thanks in advance.

[Ronnie]

but apart from the datasheets there is no real information about their sound quality and we know vendors always lie or exaggerate.

Audio is both art and science. In terms of sound quality this is very very subjective!   

[EEVblog]

but apart from the datasheets there is no real information about their sound quality and we know vendors always lie or exaggerate.

Audio is both art and science. In terms of sound quality this is very very subjective!   

I have a funny story about that.
A company that shall not be named had a product with small stereo speakers mounted on the (bare) board.
The sound had to be "just right" and the CEO only liked the sound quality from one particular cheap brand PC speaker.
Try as we might to buy the speaker separately (and there were plenty available in the standard size footprint to chose from), the CEO insisted that we must use THAT speaker.
The end result? For production, we had to buy thousands of these cheap PC speakers in their original boxes and hire a company to strip them down, desolder and remove the speakers, and toss away the rest of the case and electronics, and then deliver us the speakers!

Crazy stuff.

Dave.

[Zero999]

It depends on what you mean by small.

What physical dimensions, power rating and impedance do you require?

Note that you won't find a good sounding 0.5W 30mm speaker because it won't be large or powerful enough to give a decent amount of bass and even the treble won't be great as it will be designed to work over as broader range of frequencies as possible.

Here's a link to a 50mm 4W speaker which gives a reasonably flat response from 200Hz to 20kHz. For some bass I suggest using a boost filter set just below 200Hz or better, adding a mini woofer in a suitable enclosure.
http://www.visaton.de/en/industrie/breitband/frws5r_8.html

[pirulo123]

I just can't believe your story Dave, you have to write material for Dilbert, If Jerry Seinfeld got rich talking about peanuts and airplanes I'm sure you can make some money with these stories !

[ivan747]

I just can't believe your story Dave, you have to write material for Dilbert, If Jerry Seinfeld got rich talking about peanuts and airplanes I'm sure you can make some money with these stories !

He could write them, but he will need someone to perform in the show. Unless the audience likes Aussie accent and exaggerated eyebrow expressions.

[Kiriakos-GR]

Sound quality and speakers its something that I have investigate,
the speaker and the cabinet acts as one source.

If you have not made any thinking about getting the most out of the cabinet (size and material), no matter the speaker in it, it will produce a neutral sound.
Another problem with unbalanced cabinets, is that you cannot turn all the volume up of the speaker it self.
It is best to show to us a picture of your project, so to get an worthy advice.

   

[Zero999]

Here are some links for some tiny spekers I found on Farnell.

http://www.farnell.com/datasheets/40215.pdf
http://www.kingstate.com.tw/eng/Products/Products/ProductItem/tabid/186/ItemId/138/rtab/184/Default.aspx

They have such a poor frequency response they're only useful for sound effects and speech in toys and various gadgiets. Music will sound very tinny, like the canned music played down the phone  to you when you're on put hold.

[vk6zgo]

but apart from the datasheets there is no real information about their sound quality and we know vendors always lie or exaggerate.

Audio is both art and science. In terms of sound quality this is very very subjective!   

I have a funny story about that.
A company that shall not be named had a product with small stereo speakers mounted on the (bare) board.
The sound had to be "just right" and the CEO only liked the sound quality from one particular cheap brand PC speaker.
Try as we might to buy the speaker separately (and there were plenty available in the standard size footprint to chose from), the CEO insisted that we must use THAT speaker.
The end result? For production, we had to buy thousands of these cheap PC speakers in their original boxes and hire a company to strip them down, desolder and remove the speakers, and toss away the rest of the case and electronics, and then deliver us the speakers!

Crazy stuff.

Dave.

Dave,I must have had the same boss!

At one place I worked we had a small sub-board which had a number of Integrating networks
consisting of a 47uF electrolytic & a 1.1kohm resistor.
They stopped production for a couple of days because we were out of that value of resistor,although we had bins full of 1.0k & 1.2k resistors.
Given the tolerance range of electros,we could have used anything from 820 ohms to 1.5k!

On another occasion,the same bloke made one of the assemblers remove some 47uF tantalums from the same type of board,& wait till we got the electros into stock.

VK6ZGO

[Simon]

you need a balance of a nice speaker ANd a nice enclosure. This plastic boxes rattle terribly and ruin the sound no matter what quality of speaker.

The talking newspaper I hep and advise on computer matters as they move into using memory sticks and MP3's needed a "boom box" player to plug the memory stick into for play back. I was pleasantly surprised when they found a nice small unit that was made of wood (MDf or chipboard) and sounds really nice for what it is.

I once took apart a couple of "Hi Fi" TV's and the speaker had a separate box that was made of 5+mm plastic and had very good audio properties,must better than screwing the speaker to the thin plastic front of the TV, I actually took both out and despite not being a pair used them as a pair in my lab on a Hi Fi stereo system.

power is not everything, the bigger the speaker the better, my pair of 10W "Hi Fi" speakers sound ok on my little 4 W amp for my compyter, but nothing compares to the same amp driving my 100" warfdale speakers (bought at a charity shop for 50 pence !)