DIY Speakers

November 5, 2006 12:26 PM

Let's make speakers out of hard drives!
posted by boo_radley (8 comments total)

hmmm...I've got a bunch of old drives....
posted by Kickstart70 at 1:26 PM on November 5, 2006

I think I'm having codec problems. Or, is that just how they sound?
posted by Chuckles at 1:28 PM on November 5, 2006

Oh yeah, the afroman is totally über.
posted by snakey at 1:41 PM on November 5, 2006

self-hosted .avi video? hope me web 2.0!
posted by rxrfrx at 2:14 PM on November 5, 2006

This is good. Extreme lo-fi cobbled from hi-tech raw materials. (And I'm including the stolen cafeteria tray under "hi tech").
posted by flapjax at midnite at 5:14 PM on November 5, 2006

This is officially the oldest thing I've seen on metafilter, but that doesn't make it any less awesome.
posted by ztdavis at 7:51 PM on November 5, 2006

You can make an interesting little speaker just by connecting a common DC motor to an amplifier. Then you can listen to it by, for example, biting on the rotor and you'll hear the audio via the bones in your head transmitting the sound to your ears. Other than some resonance with the air in your mouth, the audio is completely inaudible to other people.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 1:27 AM on November 6, 2006

The Segway makes most of its sounds in the same manner, sending motor commands to the servo motors in varying frequencies. Vibrations produced range from tactile to audiable. For instance, doing something unsafe on the Segway such as reversing quickly or stepping on before the unit is ready to balance will produce a "stick-shake" warning which vibrates the platform and makes a nasty chattering sound. It also uses thes same motors to make the high frequency beeps and buzzes, as well as producing a pseudo-random noise signal to mask out the ugly whines typical of a high-power electric motor.
posted by hellphish at 9:57 AM on November 6, 2006