It took a day to clean up. Now everything is functioning properly. Power on for a few days to prevent undetected faults.
Square drivers is soo weird! Only wooden cones posted by @Ken80s look better (but not as strange!) I remember drooling over Linn speakers with oval cones and “bacteria-infected” baffles, but square cones must be a challenge to voice!!
I remember when square speakers were the latest and greatest thing back in the mid 1980s. One manufacturer does a succesful marketing campaign and everyone else tries to jump on the bandwagon. back then a colleague bought a Midi Hi-Fi (I think it might have been a Sanyo) which appeared to have square speakers. Some time later when he peaked inside he found they were normal round ones, heavily disguised by the front grills to make them look square.
The speaker's edge is cloth, unlike some types of foam edge. Once the foam edge is aging, it will be difficult to change.
At that time, many brands had this kind of "fake" square speaker speaker, aiwa. sony. Sanyo and so on. It looks like a square speaker. It's actually a round horn.
Most Sony's were the real thing but there were a ton of fake square speakers. I think Sony let AIWA use them on a few of their models, I feel like have have some tiny AIWA Versions around here. Mine are all foam surround and on the lower end, they just don't stand the test of time. I used to have repair websites bookmarked with one showing a guy hand-laying up new cloth surrounds, I can't remember what he used to impregnate the cloth to stiffen it. Then there was some aftermarket companies making new foam surrounds but I haven't seen those in ages. Here's a cool blog talking about the speakers, some of them went for big-big dollars. http://soundoddity.com/blog/index.php/2017/07/07/about-the-amazing-apm-66es/
Yet another "If it was such a great idea, why didn't they keep using it?" They always bragged about the superior surface area of a square woofer compared to a round one, but I noticed there was usually a lot of distance between the woofer and the edges of the speaker box. So, I suspect they failed to capitalize on their potential.
Yep, right, it's gonna be PITA, while changing surrounds cosmetics of the diffuser at least might be ruined. What's the model of your FH?
I'm not sure why they didn't take over the market, my FH-100W sounds pretty good but I have some floor standing pressboard, cheapo Sonys that sound really bad. The cool ones sold for several thousand dollars, they must have some quality people liked, they've been around since the mid-80's. I seem to remember some discussion years ago on AK, some of the guys had the TOTL models and said they sounded great, but we hear that all of the time with big dollar equipment.
If it cost twice as much to make as a normal speaker, which is quite likely with those special supports, the "bean counters" would soon demand that they go back to a conventional design
True, but if square speakers were really superior, audiophiles would be willing to pay any price for them. Some people pay 6 figures for speakers. So we should be seeing all the audiophile brands using square woofers, if they were really superior.
most of these sonys aren't that good ...the sony fh 909 on the other hand, i love the real square speakers, the fake ones are so tacky though lol
There are two reasons why square horns are not popular. 1. The price is more expensive than ordinary loudspeakers. 2. Its voice is not better than ordinary loudspeakers. Since the voice has no characteristics. Why do you spend more money on it?
The claim was that a square shape could achieve more surface area than a circle. Which, if true, is good for a boombox manufacturer who is trying to maximize the sound/bass while limiting the overall dimensions of the boombox. But most of these Sony's don't look like the square is big enough to take advantage of that idea. The metal frame of the speaker takes up too much space, causing the square cone to be too small.
