Plasma Audio Speaker

[@littlekitchengirl]

poisonous aspects aside, your machine is very cool looking and a fun creation. thumbs up on the aesthetics and industrial design. thumbs up :D

[@chefjoesplaylists2565]

Better to use many small enclosed arcs in an inert atmosphere, like Argon or Krypton, and a flexible membrane to couple the sound to the horns, perhaps?

[@cavemaneca]

FYI besides being a neat concept, a plasma arc has higher fidelity because the arc can more accurately represent the original sound wave. By forcing this sound wave through a membrane, you are then limited by that material's ability to transfer the wave. It would essentially negate the sound quality aspect of the plasma speaker.

[@chefjoesplaylists2565]

cavemaneca You need to deal with the ozone. It is very corrosive and generally not good for you.

[@chefjoesplaylists2565]

cavemaneca Oh, if you want perfect sound reproduction it is most certainly possible nowadays. You need something other than a conventional EM based sound mover. You heed a feedback based air mover. I don't recall at the moment who, but such an active speaker using flat plates and feedback was tried and was felt to be underperforming and expensive... and that was back when a 1MHz processor was $60 US a chip. Could it be done now? Sure... but the whole would still be silly expensive.

[@martinda7446]

Holy shit, that is genius...it rings a bell at the back of my mind though, it has probably been tried, as a good plasma tweeter is audio holy grail(one of em), but would just be an engineering nightmare...Keep thinking, you are obviously a smart one!

[@iwantmypot]

Helium is probably the easiest inert gas to find.

[@stuffhappensdownsouth9899]

perhaps you could make it louder by increasing the spark gap as the power input is increased

[@Lykoloo]

I love how this looks, it looks like a sci-fi phonograph!

[@richardsandwell2285]

Beautiful construction, it must have taken a long time to build.

[@mikeg3529]

Im not sure if carbon ash would do anything to capture or dissipate the nitrogen dioxide but it would be worth a shot to route some small plastic aquarium line to those domes discretely and a small pump to pull the dioxide away and either vent it outside or to a carbon ash canister or something

[@user21XXL]

nitrogen dioxide can be absorbed by sodium carbonate solution or mixtures like: Hydrogen peroxide with a base e.g. KOH. H202 alone would produce nitric acid

[@ivanwashington3186]

fascinating! reminds me of a dome midrange sans HF crossover. how big would it have to be to reproduce bass?

[@XavierBetoN]

why you have little output rms? so fastly distorted

[@acidbyte4760]

if distortion occurs then u need to rethink the driver. this can be done loud without any distortion

[@lesgoddam1949]

Maybe I'm not aware of the terminology - what's the driver in this case? In my view this is a driver-less speaker as it is the plasma arc creating the sound.

[@endothermicexothermic4051]

@@lesgoddam1949 he means the PWM circuit

[@MrVairhead]

Amazing that you can make sound through electricity arc. Makes me wonder about the electricity in the air. What could is say or sound.

[@gibbyrockerhunter]

I want what you are on.

[@aarondcmedia9585]

Very cool looking enclosure.

[@michaeladams3762]

I can smell the ozone from here.

[@izzzzzzzzzzzie]

geez I laughed when I read that, I hark back to the valve days

[@michaelbauers5896]

Lovely design. Too bad there's not a bit more SPL, but if you are happy with it, it's a success!

[@firstnamelastname7143]

ozone within an enclosed room, or house aside from being not so good for health will invisibly attack and ruin many plastics

[@dwalker399]

And rubber.

[@sweetgyy]

why?

[@minuteman2012]

similar to electrostatic speakers.......two charged grids with a diaphragm in between...... think the electric arc would damage them

[@sweetsweatyfeet]

Plasma technology is only practical for tweeters. The reproduction of lower frequencies unfortunately requires exponentially higher levels of power. A full range ionic plasma drive speaker is theoretically possible and has been attempted but requires thousands of watts (like about 10,000 or more) to power it to even moderate sound levels. And the quantity of ozone given off by such a device would be deadly without special ventilation. The original Ionophane ionic discharge horn tweeter by Ducane was the very first successful plasma driver that actually worked bloody well. It could be found on a number of late 50s and 60s speakers including the early B&W P2 crossed over at 2700 hz to an EMI woofer. A friend owned those speakers and they had a purity in the highs beyond anything I've ever heard. The mids and bass were not bad but paled in comparison to the tweeter.

[@shaterproofblosm]

I Wiki'ed Nitrogen dioxide and apparently exposure to low amounts of the stuff can be fatal :'p id be careful with that one. That's a damn pretty box thou!

[@floppycooldog]

I hear that plasma arcs have bad base to them is that true? Also very cool.

[@MysticalDork]

The low-end output of any speaker is directly related to the volume of air it can effectively move. With most speakers, this means that you get better low-end with a larger throw, and/or a larger cone. With plasma speakers, the size of the arc affects both, so a larger arc will produce lower frequencies better. The problem is, to get decent mid-bass, you'd likely need an arc 8 inches long and that requires a very high voltage power supply and a lot of power consumption. TLDR: To make good bass, you need a BIG plasma arc.

[@floppycooldog]

Thanks for your reply. It was not TLDR and now I know the bigger the arc the better the sound.

[@BuenaventuraRN]

try filling the dome with a noble gas

[@elektroqtus]

I'd love to create a 6 foot long plasma arc at 80Khz for a carrier wave. this should ensure low distortion at 21Khz audio drive. 6 feet should ensure lots of decibels and good bass too.

[@bapplecatthecat8213]

plus ozone... you know great for the health... and if we have any holes in the atmosphere 1:D

[@bapplecatthecat8213]

+BappleCat The Cat and apparently typos

[@derpyrage3852]

seems like all you need now is a amplifier to increase the volume on it

[@HobkinBoi]

+DERPY RAGE Actually, it just needs a beefier power supply so it can support a larger arc, and larger sound.

[@HobkinBoi]

And maybe some tweaks to the flyback itself

[@derpyrage3852]

YES some tweaks

[@AlaskanPipelineable]

+DERPY RAGE - To me, it seems the nice looking speaker cabinet (really nice) isn't too functional. The sound coming from the plasma is going straight to the air, and not through the horns. Is there a way to place the arc at the beginning of the horns without exposing them to open air?

[@derpyrage3852]

it would need to be designed well, but you could case it in a material that transfers the vibration produced by the ark with out losing too much sound quality

[@Tadesan]

Oh Jesus the gas...

[@hempopotamusloudspeakershe9793]

haaaa haaa "Greased Lightning" as a first test song.... BLAAAHAA- GREAT choice!..

[@WaschyNumber1]

Cool work

[@solomonjenkins9505]

use the world's worst song to test it lol

[@SlavTiger]

sucks when someone makes something this cool and falls off the face of the earth after

[@deepreststranger1349]

wow, what alot of work to make a beautiful looking speaker for it to sound like shit.

[@kennethbarli4469]

You should perhaps had slave speakers at the end. Make the whole system closely, to fill it with a non conductive gas . Perhaps argon.

[@kalleklp7291]

It may not be practical and the sound is shit. However, that's one of the coolest looking speakers I've ever seen..! I love the steampunk look, with that massive meter in the middle and the half glass spheres over the electrodes...

[@ObiTrev]

Friends don't let friends buy Bose

[@andybaldman]

Congrats, you made a poison machine.

[@littlekitchengirl]

How Can Humans be Affected by Nitrogen Oxide? Small levels of NOx can cause nausea, irritated eyes and/or nose, fluid forming in lungs and shortness of breath Breathing in high levels of NOx can lead to: rapid, burning spasms; swelling of throat; reduced oxygen intake; a larger buildup of fluids in lungs and/or death NOx, plus other gound-level ozone, can cause other major respiratory problems in high levels Can react with aerosols from aerosols cans and also cause respiratory problems NOx can cause visual impairment in the area affects by NOx

[@qwerty12300000660]

really cool wauw

[@johns78c]

That's actually a great demonstration of the gas that turns our atmosphere brown over congested cities on a hot day...

[@johncokos9849]

Hate to break the bad news to you, BUT IBM developed this concept 40 yrs ago with sound that was projected out into the space surround sound like in front of the listener. Check it out......John Cokos

[@GadgetPonyGal]

Your point? Maybe they just wanted to make it for themselves? No need to go shitting on their fun.

[@krisschaefer876]

sounds tinny as shit... I like it. #steampunkasfuck

[@armandoaraque9200]

hola amigo no entiendo muy bien el ingles pero me gusto el video....

[@cdoublejj]

bad ass

[@sydviscous7006]

Yeah, just what I'd want after all that work; something that sounds like crap, and produces foul gases in my home. I could fart, and accomplish exactly the same thing!

[@psirvent8]

🤣🤣🤣🤣

[@gyopicyan999]

最高

[@HobkinBoi]

Plasma porn :P love it