Karaoke sounds better after a couple of rounds so why can’t speakers sound better after being soaked in Sake (Japanese rice wine)? JVC claims that wood is an ideal speaker material due to the acoustical properties which create rich, warm and natural sounds. Apparently, the 20 year old problem was how to mold solid wood into a speaker cone without splitting the wood.
The answer was indeed a surprising solution. By soaking a birch wood sheet in Sake, the sheet becomes pliable and soft enough to be pressed into speaker cones without splitting.
JVC’s recently released EX-A10 includes a pair of two-way wood cones speakers that were created using this technic. The Geeks are interested in testing the acoustical properties of the wood cones for sure, but we can’t help but wonder how such a solution was discovered. Any ideas?
in answer to your question of how they got the “drunk speaker” idea…from “http://www.firstglimpsemag.com/Editorial/article.asp?article=articles/2005/y0210/fg2/fg2.asp&guid=”…
JVC’s wood cone speakers were 20 years in the making because forming the wood sheets into a speaker cone proved daunting—they would crack or split when stamped. The solution turned out to be sake, or Japanese rice wine. A JVC audio engineer in Japan hit upon the sake solution while enjoying dried squid at a restaurant. He asked if anything special was done to make the dried squid so chewy, and he was told that it was soaked in sake. Inspired, the JVC team tried the same technique with the wood sheets. It worked—after soaking in sake, the sheets could be pressed into speaker cones without splitting.