The Truextent® brand acoustic beryllium in your speakers started out life as a combination of raw material from the mountains of Utah and recycled product that has come back in the form of medical devices, aerospace components, and even other beryllium-containing speakers. The raw material that will become Truextent beryllium speaker domes is processed at our sister facility in Ohio to purify it to the standards required for the crisp, clear, live sound that has become the hallmark of audiophile-quality speakers. This material is then rolled (
want to know why rolling is better?) to the precise gauge, or thickness, required by the best speaker manufacturers, formed into shaped domes, assembled into the final product, and then sent back for listeners to enjoy the world over.
When those speakers come to the end of their useful life, valueable beryllium domes get another chance. Post-consumer beryllium is returned to our Ohio facility where it is remelted and reprocessed, returning to useful life as speaker domes, as the X-ray windows in life saving X-ray tubes, the connectors in high reliability electronics such as your cell phone or GPS, or the spring material that makes sure fire suppressing building sprinklers will work.
As one of the leading causes of greenhouse gases is power generation, anything that can be done to conserve power is a step towards reducing those greenhouse gases. In order to generate sound, speakers convert electrical energy to the mechanical vibrations that people can hear. The more efficiently that can be done, the less power is needed. The stiffness and weight of a speaker dome are directly related to its efficiency, or how much electrical power is needed to generate sound. Truextent acoustic beryllium is 2.5 times less dense than an equivalent titanium dome and 1.5 times less dense than an equivalent aluminum dome. In addition, since the material is so stiff, it can be used in thinner gauges, further reducing the mass. All this mass reduction results in less mechanical inertia to overcome and more acoustic power with the same electrical power. How much more? From 800Hz to 8,000Hz, at the frequencies where Truextent acoustic beryllium is used most often, the same electrical input produces 75% more acoustic power. This reduced power requirement has other trickle down effects, too. Lower power means fewer speakers and amplifiers are needed at a concert, which means there is less product being transported around. Fewer trucks mean less exhaust and less greenhouse gases. For more information on reducing greenhouse gases,
click here for an article from Prosound News on reducing the energy usage at concerts.
The more you look into the green benefits of using Truextent acoustic beryllium, the more you realize that you're not just improving the quality of what you listen to, you're also helping the environment. And that sounds great to everyone!
