Hi, many years ago I remember being impressed by some speakers that looked a
bit like footballs. The ones I saw were made by Toshiba as I recall, but
were out of my price range. They had literally speakers mounted in a multi
sided solid a bit like a dodecahedron, and covered up with some kind of
foam. You could hang them from the ceiling or on a stand. Very heavy for
their size. The mounting was die cast.
With a bass bin they actually sounded very nice.
You do not see this sort of thing any more,, so I'd imagine they had a
strange impedance. It was interesting as they seemed to not have any
tweeters or anything and one would have thought the reflected sound would
have mucked up the stereo, but at least in the couple of demos I attended
this was not true.

Another strange speaker I recall from long ago was just a gimmick I think,
as it had a definite smell and a crackling kind of sound. It was a plasma
modulated with audio. Weird. Completely impractical of course.
As I'm talking about silly gimmicks, I used to have one of those VW minibus
record players. You stood it on the lp and it played it as it followed the
groove. Very bad audio and it could not get more than about a third of the
way to the middle before it got confused.
Talk about wow and flutter...

Brian

--
Brian Gaff -
Note:- In order to reduce spam, any email without 'Brian Gaff'
in the display name may be lost.
Blind user, so no pictures please!

Brian Gaff wrote:
Hi, many years ago I remember being impressed by some speakers that looked a
bit like footballs. The ones I saw were made by Toshiba as I recall, but
were out of my price range. They had literally speakers mounted in a multi
sided solid a bit like a dodecahedron, and covered up with some kind of
foam. You could hang them from the ceiling or on a stand. Very heavy for
their size. The mounting was die cast.
With a bass bin they actually sounded very nice.
You do not see this sort of thing any more,, so I'd imagine they had a
strange impedance. It was interesting as they seemed to not have any
tweeters or anything and one would have thought the reflected sound would
have mucked up the stereo, but at least in the couple of demos I attended
this was not true.

It wouldn't necessarily have a strange impedance. With 12 8ohm drivers
you could get 6ohm overall by connecting them in series-parallel.
And it would work just as well as a Bose 901.


Another strange speaker I recall from long ago was just a gimmick I think,
as it had a definite smell and a crackling kind of sound. It was a plasma
modulated with audio. Weird. Completely impractical of course.

Gimmick? Impractical? Bugger the ozone layer, I want a pair of plasma
tweeters.

--
Eiron.

Brian Gaff wrote:
Hi, many years ago I remember being impressed by some speakers that looked a
bit like footballs. The ones I saw were made by Toshiba as I recall, but
were out of my price range. They had literally speakers mounted in a multi
sided solid a bit like a dodecahedron, and covered up with some kind of
foam. You could hang them from the ceiling or on a stand. Very heavy for
their size. The mounting was die cast.

You can get suspended ball speakers for public address use. Could be
adapted for non-suspended use.

searches ebay

Oooh look
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Technics-Rare-...mZ140298747032

(no connection with the seller)

Owain

"Brian Gaff" wrote in message
om...
Hi, many years ago I remember being impressed by some speakers that looked
a bit like footballs. The ones I saw were made by Toshiba as I recall, but
were out of my price range. They had literally speakers mounted in a multi
sided solid a bit like a dodecahedron, and covered up with some kind of
foam. You could hang them from the ceiling or on a stand. Very heavy for
their size. The mounting was die cast.
With a bass bin they actually sounded very nice.
You do not see this sort of thing any more,, so I'd imagine they had a
strange impedance. It was interesting as they seemed to not have any
tweeters or anything and one would have thought the reflected sound would
have mucked up the stereo, but at least in the couple of demos I attended
this was not true.

Another strange speaker I recall from long ago was just a gimmick I think,
as it had a definite smell and a crackling kind of sound. It was a plasma
modulated with audio. Weird. Completely impractical of course.
As I'm talking about silly gimmicks, I used to have one of those VW
minibus record players. You stood it on the lp and it played it as it
followed the groove. Very bad audio and it could not get more than about a
third of the way to the middle before it got confused.
Talk about wow and flutter...

Brian

--
Brian Gaff -
Note:- In order to reduce spam, any email without 'Brian Gaff'
in the display name may be lost.
Blind user, so no pictures please!


Lorentz developed for German Radio an omni-directional loudspeaker that was
triangular in plan, with a woofer on each wall, and surmounted by a ball
with a number of tweeters (16 I think) so that it provided close to
omni-directional coverage. In the days before stereo, it was supposed to be
excellent.

As to the plasma driver, this was no gimmick. Fane made a product called
the Ionofane, which was an excellent tweeter with a full 2.5k - 30kHz
bandwidth, tiny amounts of distortion, and a good output level. It worked by
modulating a 27MHz plasma, and coupling this to a horn. Unfortunately, it
released a fair amount of ozone, but audio-wise it was superb albeit at a
very high price. It was over £29 in 1970 when a conventional tweeter, like
the KEF T27, was £5.

S.
--
http://audiopages.googlepages.com

Serge Auckland wrote:
As to the plasma driver, this was no gimmick. Fane made a product
called the Ionofane, which was an excellent tweeter with a full 2.5k -
30kHz bandwidth, tiny amounts of distortion, and a good output level. It
worked by modulating a 27MHz plasma, and coupling this to a horn.
Unfortunately, it released a fair amount of ozone, but audio-wise it was
superb albeit at a very high price. It was over £29 in 1970 when a
conventional tweeter, like the KEF T27, was £5.

Cool-ish. I just about remember these on some programme like
"Tomorrow's World" when I was very young.

I wouldn't want one (or two) in my living room, though; ozone
smells *horrible*. I remember when I was a teenager, my mate and
I would salvage transformers from old valve 'scopes, and wire them
in reverse, putting 10V or more into a 6.3V winding, and making
fat, furry, orange noisy sparks at the EHT outputs, and then stretching
the sparks. Fun, but it *mang*. So do some laser printers.


Martin

On Tue, 03 Feb 2009 18:13:44 +0000, Fleetie
wrote:

Serge Auckland wrote:
As to the plasma driver, this was no gimmick. Fane made a product
called the Ionofane, which was an excellent tweeter with a full 2.5k -
30kHz bandwidth, tiny amounts of distortion, and a good output level. It
worked by modulating a 27MHz plasma, and coupling this to a horn.
Unfortunately, it released a fair amount of ozone, but audio-wise it was
superb albeit at a very high price. It was over £29 in 1970 when a
conventional tweeter, like the KEF T27, was £5.

Cool-ish. I just about remember these on some programme like
"Tomorrow's World" when I was very young.

I wouldn't want one (or two) in my living room, though; ozone
smells *horrible*. I remember when I was a teenager, my mate and
I would salvage transformers from old valve 'scopes, and wire them
in reverse, putting 10V or more into a 6.3V winding, and making
fat, furry, orange noisy sparks at the EHT outputs, and then stretching
the sparks. Fun, but it *mang*. So do some laser printers.


Martin

Bloody hell, I've learned two new things on one post! I always thought
that minging was a gerund without an original verb, but now I know not
only the verb, but its past participle as well.

Brilliant

d

Don Pearce wrote:
the sparks. Fun, but it *mang*. So do some laser printers.


Martin

Bloody hell, I've learned two new things on one post! I always thought
that minging was a gerund without an original verb, but now I know not
only the verb, but its past participle as well.

Brilliant

Well, "mang" as above would be the *imperfect* form, but
"past participle" usually refers to the *perfect* tense, which does not
appear above; so shall we have "mung" or still just "mang" for the
perfect tense?

You ming
You mang
You have mung / mang ? Or just plain old "minged"?


Martin :-)

On Tue, 03 Feb 2009 18:32:52 +0000, Fleetie
wrote:

Don Pearce wrote:
the sparks. Fun, but it *mang*. So do some laser printers.


Martin

Bloody hell, I've learned two new things on one post! I always thought
that minging was a gerund without an original verb, but now I know not
only the verb, but its past participle as well.

Brilliant

Well, "mang" as above would be the *imperfect* form, but
"past participle" usually refers to the *perfect* tense, which does not
appear above; so shall we have "mung" or still just "mang" for the
perfect tense?

You ming
You mang
You have mung / mang ? Or just plain old "minged"?


You are going to let me start that with Thou mingest.

d

Oh, I did not know about that. I suppose for a tweeter it would not need to
be big. So are we all now going to modify our ionisers to play audio from
the Ipod?
grin.
Brian

--
Brian Gaff....Note, this account does not accept Bcc: email.
graphics are great, but the blind can't hear them
Email:
__________________________________________________ __________________________________________________ __________


"Serge Auckland" wrote in message
...

"Brian Gaff" wrote in message
om...
Hi, many years ago I remember being impressed by some speakers that
looked a bit like footballs. The ones I saw were made by Toshiba as I
recall, but were out of my price range. They had literally speakers
mounted in a multi sided solid a bit like a dodecahedron, and covered up
with some kind of foam. You could hang them from the ceiling or on a
stand. Very heavy for their size. The mounting was die cast.
With a bass bin they actually sounded very nice.
You do not see this sort of thing any more,, so I'd imagine they had a
strange impedance. It was interesting as they seemed to not have any
tweeters or anything and one would have thought the reflected sound would
have mucked up the stereo, but at least in the couple of demos I attended
this was not true.

Another strange speaker I recall from long ago was just a gimmick I
think, as it had a definite smell and a crackling kind of sound. It was a
plasma modulated with audio. Weird. Completely impractical of course.
As I'm talking about silly gimmicks, I used to have one of those VW
minibus record players. You stood it on the lp and it played it as it
followed the groove. Very bad audio and it could not get more than about
a third of the way to the middle before it got confused.
Talk about wow and flutter...

Brian

--
Brian Gaff -
Note:- In order to reduce spam, any email without 'Brian Gaff'
in the display name may be lost.
Blind user, so no pictures please!


Lorentz developed for German Radio an omni-directional loudspeaker that
was triangular in plan, with a woofer on each wall, and surmounted by a
ball with a number of tweeters (16 I think) so that it provided close to
omni-directional coverage. In the days before stereo, it was supposed to
be excellent.

As to the plasma driver, this was no gimmick. Fane made a product called
the Ionofane, which was an excellent tweeter with a full 2.5k - 30kHz
bandwidth, tiny amounts of distortion, and a good output level. It worked
by modulating a 27MHz plasma, and coupling this to a horn. Unfortunately,
it released a fair amount of ozone, but audio-wise it was superb albeit at
a very high price. It was over £29 in 1970 when a conventional tweeter,
like the KEF T27, was £5.

S.
--
http://audiopages.googlepages.com