Since 1876, when the gramophone was first invented, audio media has undergone several incarnations. We have had records, then we progressed to tapes, CDs, mp3 to today’s streaming media platforms.
However, over the course of the past 100 years, the final element in the audio production chain, the speaker driver, has changed very little. While the materials have improved, the underlying principle hasn’t, a vibrating diaphragm which transfers sound energy into the air.
You may think that because we have been using the same basic principle for the past 100 years, we now have perfect speakers. But this is not the case.
Speakers, with their moving parts, distort and colour the sounds we hear, creating an altered version of the original recording.
Small speakers can’t produce loud sounds because of the limited range of motion of the speaker diaphragm. Good bass is impossible to achieve from a small speaker and is particularly noticeable when you play music on a laptop or mobile.
To get good sound reproduction you typically need 3 speakers to cover the full audio range, woofer, tweeter, and mid-range. So speaker design is full of compromises to try and achieve decent quality audio.