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Sake Used to Make Wooden Speakers
geeber writes "And you thought Sake was only good with Sushi? Well, think again! IEEE Spectrum has an article on how JVC has used sake to enable making speaker cones out of wood. Wood has a wide frequency response which makes it desirable as a material for speaker cones. However Toshikatsu Kuwahata worked for 20 years trying to make the cones out of wood without cracking. Finally he discovered that soaking the wood in sake (but not whiskey) made the wood pliable enough to form into a speaker cone. So let's raise our glasses and toast those clever engineers as we crank up the volume!"
Hell, sake enables me to make all kinds of things, most of them accessory fluids for my American Standard, but I sure as hell don't get any stinkin' Slashdot articles about them, now, do I. Harrumph.
So I guess the sound really does give you wood.
Si tacuisses philosophus mansisses. If you had kept quiet, you would have remained a philosopher.
In other news researchers are using wasabi to implement "Super Bass".
I wonder when we'll see wood-cone based speakers filter into the world of hi-fi, if ever.
RTFA....
This year, JVC introduced its first wood-cone speaker product based on Imamura's process
and
The system ships in May, at a suggested retail price of US $550. Back in Maebashi, Japan, his mission accomplished, Kuwahata has announced his retirement.
sigh....
I find your ideas intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
A similar trick was apparently "used" by Stradivarius in making violins, in that inadvertent soaking in brine in combination with the usual varnishes applied creates a good sound. More info further down on this page. I've listened to a talk by Nagyvary in which one of his violins was played, and it's truly stunning to hear (I used to play the violin before I found out I was better at coding :)
Good. I can't stand underaged drinking.
True story.
Aside from the differing sonic qualities of the wood, I wonder how it will hold up to temperature and humidity. Even if the speakers sound great, they have to be able to be used for more than a few months.
I wouldn't be surprised to see this be chic in audiophile circles. The irony of expensive wood sounding great but cheap paper being crap would be could be very appealing to members of the Golden Ear Club.
As anyone who has had a brush with the world of hi-fi knows, if the material or process just sounds exotic enough and is expensive enough, it will sell very well no matter what the actual benefits may be.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Actually, that cable phenomena you speak of has nothing to do with which directions electrons "flow better" in. Generally, many audiophile cables have a separate shield that is connected at one end, and in order for it to introduce the least amount of noise possible it should be connected at the source end -- hence cable directionality. Also (and more debatably), if you see the trace on a time domain reflectometer of an audio cable (with said construction) connected wrong way round, then you'll be pretty horrified at the massive impedance artifacts.
This
...you get to drink the sake while you play with your wood.
...you get to drink the sake while you play with your wood.
I tried for a long time to think of a joke funnier than this quote.
I couldn't, so lets see it one more time.
If they're made of wood, then scientifically speaking they must weigh the same as a duck. And therefore:
They're a witch! Burn them, burn them!
You would be suprised at the different materials conventional speaker cones are made from. You've probably seen plastic and paper cones. Probably even a few different types of plastics.
Speaker cones have to low resonance or at least a very narrow frequency range they resonate in. With a narrow resonating range, you can just put a low-pass/high-pass filter on it so it never receives the resonating frequencies - they get sent to another speaker with a different resonant frequency.
Metal tweeters have become very popular recently. Any really light, but tough metal is good. Alumin(i)um and titanium are the most commonly used, but there are some more exotic ones like Focal/JMLabs beryllium tweeters. The problem with metal cones is that they act like tuning forks - a really narrow resonant frequency range, but if they hit it they really resonate. My B&W 603s have aluminium woofers - which I just love the sound of. They cut them off pretty low though.
Kevlar (yes, the bullet proof vest material) is also a popular material at the moment. B&W and Wharfdale are two companies that make Kevlar based drivers. B&W have some interesting documents on their web site on what makes it such a good material.
Wooden cones would have a nice wide frequency range. Think about how wood sounds when you knock it with your knuckles - a nice dull thud. Yes, I'm ignoring all the musical instruments made of wood. I'm talking about your normal block of wood. They already make the vast majority of speaker cabinets out of wood precisely for the low-resonant properties that it exhibits.
This is interesting news in the world of hi-fi.
Refuse to make a statement in your sig!
I can't wait to get some of these just to have a friend come over, look at them, and say "Cool! Amish speakers!"
The resonance of wood soaked in brine or sake may help a Stradivarius, but in a speaker cone the only two factors that make a good one are lightness and stiffness. Any kind of resonance introduces a sound of its own that isn't present in the recording. Hi-fi types refer to this as coloration. If the JVC guys have been working on wood cones for 20 years it's because it is relatively inert, strong and light, not because it adds a particular sonic character of its own. It's very hard to build something that has no negative effect due to its form, yet creates a large positive secondary effect - a basic law of nature and the fundamentals of engineering.
Then that's probably a good sake to avoid, because it's expensive, and what everyone 20 years ago would have called "ruined" sake.
Sake is beer, not wine. That "rice wine" thing is a cultural misnomer that is now confusing even the Japanese. Beer does not age for more than a few months at best. Light beers, as rice beer by its very nature is, do not age at all really. They are best consumed as close to being poured from the keg as possible. One tries to keep beer if one needs to. From going bad. It is difficult in most cases.
The very link you provide notes that you can keep most sake for about 2 months. I'm not sure why you'd want to. It's like refusing to drink a Bud until it's past its sell by date. You buy it when you want it, and drink it. Like beer.
These aged sakes are being marketed because the customer has started demanding that their "wine" be properly aged, and frankly, it's driving the brewers nuts. Centuries of tradition and a lifetime of practice to produce the very best, fresh sake, and now they're being forced to put it in barrels and let it go to ruin before people will buy it. For a while they responded with a "customer education" campaign, and some of them report being verbally abused by customers who thought the brewers were trying to rip them off by insisting the fresh stuff was the good stuff.
But, they are businessmen. If that's what the customer insists upon, and is even willing to pay a premium price for, well, then I guess that's what the customer will be sold.
Maybe it will drive the price of fresh down so I can afford more of it. I like sake.
Now if I can only find a way to drive down the price of 25 year old cognac. I like that stuff too, but it's usually E&J for me.
KFG
Store with salt