I find it quite astonishing that display technology went from a high voltage electron gun fired at Phosphorus on the back of a think glass vacuum tube to independant crystals moving in front of polarized film to individual lights on what is a glorified potentiometer. Yet, the humble speaker hasn't funademtally changed since its inception. It's still a piece of material connected to a coil of copper wire with current passing through it around a stationary magnet. The materials that make a speaker have changed over the years from paper to polymers and the magnets changed from crappy Iron to super awesome Neodymium but thats it. When we want better sound from them, we add more of them. Then we add crossovers, up the wattage, maybe throw in a port for bass reinforcment and call it a day. I would like to sit here and tell you that there is something better, but I can't. I haven't heard of a single alternative to the voice coil for audio reproduction. And yet, I'm ok with that. The speaker has done its job very well over the past ~100 years. A little time and a bit of cash can get you a pretty decent system now adays.

However, I would like to know who thought it was a good idea to put button sized speakers in portable electronics so I can smack them repeatedly in the ear. Laptops are far more guilty of this than other devices. You've got room in this thing. Stop using what are arguably a waste of space. Small speakers don't have to sound like garbage either. I own several "capsule" speakers and they're easily the best small speaker I've heard and will probably ever hear. Why aren't these or drivers similar to these in laptops? There's no excuse for it. My music should not have to sound like a cymbol truck crashing into a salt factory because you couldn't be bothered to put in a halfway decent sound subsystem. The drivers used in the "capsules" aren't that big either. The diameter of the driver itself is four centimeters. Four. Four centimeters. You could easily fit 2 of them in a laptop. You could probably fit 2 of them in a 7 inch tablet if you designed it right. By comparison the width of the speakers in my craptop is 2 centimeters but they give you two of them for that awesome stereo sound. Of course HP is making laptops with audio systems by Dre or whatever and all I can imagine is the above but with some terribad bass boost akin to Bose's AcoustiAss module. I think this will change though. Simply because its so bad that anyone who imporves it can easily market it. Moreso than a not shit cell camera. Especially if a cell manufaturer somehow figures out how to stuff a 40 millimeter driver in their phone. Imagine being able to play your music on your phone and being able to hear it over the most mundane background noise and with some actual accuracy. Same for tablets and laptops. Enough of my diatrible. What say you? Do you know of any voice coil replacements? Do you think one day laptop manufacturers and tablet manufacturers will actually up the speaker size? Do I need to take some Pepto Bismal for the crap I'm spewing out of my mouth?

Note: This rant came about because someone at my work decided to play crappy dubstep over an ipod speaker, making it worse.