Yesterday we were talking about the "warm" sound of wood. Turns out that there are engineers who don't take it as a joke at all!

I just found out that JVC has been developing speaker drivers with a thinly sliced then pressed piece of birch wood!!! The chief engineer had kept a "burning desire" to make a woodcone speaker since 20 years ago, when he made some initial prototype drivers. He eventually made it into an official project 5 years ago, which resulted in a dozen or so patented methods of making a cone/dome out of a thin piece of wood. They hope to release the first bunch of complete speaker systems by the end of 2003; I have no idea if they will market them outside Japan. Now I have a "burning desire" to listen to these speakers!!!

Anyway, here are several photo's...


The 8cm (3") mid-woofer


The 1" dome tweeter


Woodcone material after the "tertiary press" stage


A prototype bookshelf


A prototype floorstander


Hey, the shape of the cabinet looks soooo familiar!!!

Masa, is this one of those games where someone makes up a story and everyone else has to guess if it's true or not?

Will they call it the "Pinocchio"?

They look nice enough, I wonder what they sound like. I also wonder if they're stealing any Axiom patents!

Yes, this is for real. But all press releases and news are in Japanese so far. Here is a web translation of JVC's original PR by babelfish.altavista.com, with some additional photos.

Ooh, pretty! :-) I wouldn't mind hearing those. On the other had, JVC...

In reply to:

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On the other hand, JVC...

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HAHAHA... I know your feeling. Isn't it exactly like when you find out that Honda makes S2000 with its crazy 9000rpm redline? You thought that Honda was the maker of Civic and Accord... It is refreshing to watch a big mature corporate doing such "playful" things.

Naw, the Honda's no surprise. They also made a world dominating F1 car about, what, 10 years ago, and they also make the NSX. I'm just not a big fan of their styling.

True. And let's not forget about their supebikes, too... Just couldn't come up with a better example. Anybody???

nice.. I would love to hear those. now we just need those wood interconnects and speaker wire!

Alright sushi, I nominate you to go audition them.

i think that those speakers would sound different day to day if humidity levels change,my guitar speaker cabinet is made out of plywood and the amp has to be adjusted when conditions change,so i guess,with wood drivers it might be even more extreme..just a thought...ron

Lawn mowers?

Yeah, perhaps these speakers may need a substantial break-in period, too.

How much different do you think wood drivers (especially at the thickness we're talking about) than paper drivers? Both are basically the same thing, but one has been processed more than the other.

Those speakers wouldn't have a single protest when it comes to the WAF test... They are absolutely beautiful!!

I would love to hear them, lets just hope they come stateside.

Peter,

According to their PR that I linked above (unfortunately, the badly translated version), the native wood is quite different from paper as speaker cone/dome materials. Here is a paraphrased summary:

(1) Wood has an ideal combination of high sound velocity ("fast" transients) and high intrinsic loss (low resonance) as a material for speaker diaphragm.

(2) Acoustic characteristics of wood are highly anisotropic (direction-dependent) due to the natural grains, which effectively prevents unwanted standing waves in the diaphragm.


ZeN,

Unfortunately, the maximum cone size they can manufacture is ~10cm (4") at this time. So, don't expect a beautiful 12" woofer just yet. Perhaps, a line-source array using a multitude of the 3" mid-woofers / 1" tweeters with a cabinet finished in matching birch wood veneers would look just awesome.

Wow, I hope they come out with 'simulated wood, black vinyl' drivers next!