In Search Of Small Speakers

Brilliant idea, I'm always in need of speakers for other scale sound installs and now I've got another place to look. 

That's a great idea. I have a couple of 5-volt PS2 engines with bad speakers and was thinking of making up some multi-speaker alternatives to get to the 16-Ohm impedence.

I'm going to get an assortment of them in and then decide on which style is best suited to my use, this was the first shipment.

These were sourced at Princess Auto...a Canadian chain.  After hacking into the sealed case, about half of the 1 inch cube can be disposed of if desired.  I installed 2 in parallel ( the entire cube ) in my first ERR upgrade on a scale GG1, ignoring the ohm rating.  My audiophool ears don't seem to mind the cut back on high tones at 16 ohms, although volume isn't the greatest.  As one can imagine, my first upgrade wasn't the place for radical experimentation, but I was impressed enough with the result to bo back to PA and buy 12 more speakers.

The recent economical purchase of an older Dallee steam sound system ( 3 , 8 ohm speaker outputs ) has provided me with a perfect experimental platform.  Initial findings prove encouraging, although nothing can produce an "as installed" sound unless it is installed.  I hope to continue playing with the very flexible Dallee system variables and speaker modifications when I decide what loco gets the installation.

Bruce

In HO scale, I have installed "Sugar Cube" speakers. They are not traditional speakers with a cone and coil, not sure how they work. They are just a flat metal panel which then gets mounted over an enclosure. With the enclosure, they are roughly the size of a sugar cube, hence the name.

They sound AMAZING for their size. I put four of them in an HO J-class 4-8-4 and the sound was incredible - for an an HO locomotive.

Give them a look.

GRJ,

The HO and N scale folks have some really small speakers for their DCC systems these days that are pretty impressive sounding. I don't know the prices of any in particular, but I imagine that the ones you have found would be less expensive. The ones I have seen all have baffles and come in many different sizes. Might be worth a look to compare though, if you haven't already done so?

Good thinking.

John, I have a friend who is a great speaker. He is an ex-wrestler but only 4' 11"

I'm sorry, John. My mind works in strange ways  . . . . 

rtr12 posted:

GRJ,

The HO and N scale folks have some really small speakers for their DCC systems these days that are pretty impressive sounding. I don't know the prices of any in particular, but I imagine that the ones you have found would be less expensive. The ones I have seen all have baffles and come in many different sizes. Might be worth a look to compare though, if you haven't already done so?

A friend of mine has a Broadway Limited PRR M-1a. Has great sound-for N scale. Will never be mistaken for a Lionel M-1a for sound volume...

N scale I don't know about? There was a thread here on the forum a few months ago about HO (I think) where they were demonstrating some of the new sound decoders and speakers  and the sound was quite impressive. These things are hard to tell from a youtube video, especially the actual sound if you were in the room, but from the ones I saw/heard I was really wishing they were available for O gauge.

I don't remember the thread title, but I will look around and post a link if I can find it.

I think this was one of the threads, it was about an S gauge install though and not HO as I was thinking. However, they may have discussed some smaller scales as well? I don't recall and didn't re-read the entire thread. The speakers were Tang Band brand and some were fairly expensive as I recall. They have made some great improvements recently in the smaller scale sounds though.

Here is a link to a US site that carries the Tang Band speakers and provides pricing. There may also be more links in the linked thread, I don't recall that either. 

I saw a ton of HO speakers, but at three times the price of the laptop speakers, I'm a bit loath to spend money trying a bunch of models.  I get more bang for my buck sampling laptop speakers and the come in pairs.   I spent less than $5 shipped for pairs of laptop speakers and a couple of the sub-$5 purchases were four speakers, the whole set for the laptop.  Some of the laptop speakers have impressive acoustic engineering, impressive range and volume for such a tiny box.

Yes, I remembered the Tang Band ones were a bit expensive. Also, earlier I was pretty sure the ones you found were much less. Trying an assortment of the Tang Band speakers would get into the wallet pretty heavily. I think some may have been recommended in the thread I linked above though, IIRC. I think I will go back and re-read that thread myself as a refresher. 

One of those Tang Bands might be worth it for that 'Extra Special Project' that might come along one of these days? Then again they could just be the same things you found in the laptop speakers, only with an inflated price?

I'll wait until someone else spends the bucks, I have a bunch of little speakers now, I think I'm set for a spell.   I do think the laptop boys have a lot of money to spend on engineering for good sound, some of these are pretty amazing.  I also see something unexpected, little vent tubes that are obviously custom designed for length and function.  When I block them, the sound quality drops noticeably, so they are functional as well.  I am hard pressed to believe that the HO ones would be superior, I've heard a lot of HO stuff running, and it's not that loud.

When you hack the enclosure, do you reseal them and is it just plastic or do you have something else?  I also thought of laptop speakers when I had the idea of putting a speaker in a steam engine and keep the smoke unit.

Gene Anstine

I do a ton of soudn installs in HO and N scale and am always looking to source speakers. I generally use LOKSound decoders and Ive been using their speakers but the simple rules of speakers are the bigger the speaker the better the sound if you can use bigger speakers use more. I have a hard time getting the sound I want from the smaller stuff when I'm at double my impedance

grfd59 posted:

When you hack the enclosure, do you reseal them and is it just plastic or do you have something else?  I also thought of laptop speakers when I had the idea of putting a speaker in a steam engine and keep the smoke unit.

I just use plastic to seal up the enclosure after I chop them.  For the ones below, I used pieces of the plastic hacked when I cut down the enclosures.  The speakers to the left with the green arrows are the "finished" product, the ones with the red arrows are what I started with.

This is somewhat of a "work in progress", but I'm happy with the results of my mods so far.

Matt Makens posted:

I do a ton of soudn installs in HO and N scale and am always looking to source speakers. I generally use LOKSound decoders and Ive been using their speakers but the simple rules of speakers are the bigger the speaker the better the sound if you can use bigger speakers use more. I have a hard time getting the sound I want from the smaller stuff when I'm at double my impedance

 Matt, the object of this exercise is a smaller speaker when I can't fit a larger one in.  I agree, bigger is usually better with speakers.  OTOH, some of the small laptop speakers have very "big" sound for their size.

This thread is very interesting esp if you are dealing with installing speakers OEM style in the fuel tanks of an MTH As616, and/or WBB Nw2's. Both have VERY small spaces for speakers.

Very good thread; another option I have seen work pretty well is installing Ipad speakers in both N and HO scale; the sound is impressive for that scale; have thought about going that way in space limited O gauge diesel fuel tanks; have to try it some day; one can find them on the bay; Falcon70

Just have to find the iPad speakers.

Hi JOHN,

  Don't know if you looked here or not Model Train Stuff, for small speakers but they have some of different sizes.  Here is the link.

http://www.modeltrainstuff.com/Speakers-s/1171.htm

Yes I did look there, that's where the pricing comment came from.  They average around $10/ea, and I bought most of mine for less than $5 a pair, and with one set I got four speakers for that price.

John, bigger is always better but in HO and N the biggest you can do is still pretty dang small so really big sound form  1" cube is something i've been looking for. It just never occurred to me to look at laptop speakers

I started the quest when I was doing a little project that needs sound and found this little speaker in my parts box.  It's 1" x 7/8" x 1/2", and the volume level is pretty amazing for it's size!  It's from an old laptop that I scrapped several years ago, I always see what I can salvage from something like that, these were fruits of that effort.

I bought some small speakers from Parts Express.  But the trick is finding a baffle that fits them. 

I think using laptop speakers like you did is a great idea.  Thanks.

The sound isn't necessarily just the speaker. The baffle and its design are integral to getting good sound out of small speakers. A well designed baffle with will increase the sound tremendously. There is much more money available to laptop engineers to design speakers and baffles that give great sound than there is in the train biz

That's what impressed me about the laptop speakers.  Many of them have tuned ports to enhance the sound, it's clear that a sound engineer spent some time squeezing the best and loudest sound out of the designs.

For freight car and trackside sounds the IPhone 4s speakers are impressive.  The old paper towel tube or toilet paper tube baffle is helpful too.

In blind listening tests Charmin was the champion.

Very interesting topic!  SEARCH is a valuable tool. I am curious what impedance range those various speakers have. 

What speaker are you referring to?

@Scrapiron Scher posted:

John, I have a friend who is a great speaker. He is an ex-wrestler but only 4' 11"

I'm sorry, John. My mind works in strange ways  . . . . 

Well, Mr Scrapiron, yours is not the only one. 

Any of those ex-PC speakers you were talking about.  I suppose they are all different??

A majority of the laptop speakers I have found are 8 ohm models.

Thank you.

As a result of this thread, I did actually buy two really tiny rectangular laptop 4-ohm speakers from Ebay.  I did this shortly after I last posted (in 2017).  Haven't used them yet, but they are targeted for an RMT Amtrak S-4 which I upgraded to ERR years ago.  I got lazy when I did the upgrade and just used the existing speaker.  It worked fine a few times then died. 

But first, now that I have the time, I want to finish the ERR upgrade to my MTH PS1 Amtrak Genesis.  Then I'll get to the S-4 later.

GRJ, sorry to post an off-topic question, but when you did the ERR upgrade to your Genesis, did you use the existing volume knob (10K pot) or did you just remove it?

I removed the pot, the ERR RS Commander has the pot on-board.  Although it's possible to extend it, I don't run conventional, and when running command, the RS Commander remembers the volume settings through power-off cycles, so I don't need an external volume pot.

Okay, thanks.  I'll remove the pot.  Good, because I would like to use that space for something else.