Who has ever been let down trying to play loud music on a little speaker, only to hear a fuzzy, flappy sound? Gallo Acoustics have hit on the answer to this age-old problem - Something that many speaker producers claim to have done, but few actually have.

The age-old speaker problem

We’ve discussed music lovers and the technical solutions to their long-standing upsets before. Specifically in our article recommending Amina’s flat speakers. Today’s recommendation though, digs deeper into the problems of the muso set than ever before. We're asking, ‘How do you get full, big sound from a little speaker?’

Gallo Acoustics' solution

The solution, according to Gallo Acoustics is their cylindrical diaphragm transducer, or CDT. This innovation allows Gallo's speakers to project sound through a 180-degree plane. That's half of a full sphere. Perhaps more critically, it also created the basis for developing speakers that sound 5 to 10 times as big as they are.

For reference, they are four-to-eleven-inch balls, depending on the model, though they can be made bigger.  

The outcome of all this is that Gallo Acoustics have broken down the old barriers of loudspeakers.

Our clients often tell us they want incredibly loud sound with great fidelity and a full feel, but without the big, unsightly speakers. Until Gallo’s Micro

 speakers exploded onto the world stage over the last few decades, we’d have had to say, ‘Sorry. That’s not possible'. Fortunately for us, Anthony Gallo and his firm broke all the rules of sound reproduction. And trust us, it is fortunate: There are a lot of people who ask us to help them recreate a rock concert in their living rooms. Now, we can come pretty close to putting Woodstock in your toilet with no loss of fidelity, if you should so desire.

 You don’t have to take our word for it though. There’s a relatively simple logic to the superiority of Gallo speakers that audiophiles and tech nerds like us can appreciate.

1 - Magnet, 2 - Voice coil, 3 - Suspension, 4 - Speaker cone

How traditional speakers work and why they're limited by size

An old-fashioned speaker is a big magnet attached to a speaker cone by a tight coil of wire called a voice coil. Passing an electric current through the coil of wire turns it into a solid magnet, making it shrink. This in turn pulls the speaker cone toward the permanent magnet. Doing this many times, rapidly causes the speaker cone to vibrate and create sound. Increase the current to increase the volume of the sound.

However, careful design and scaling is needed to maintain a smooth sound with good fidelity. Increase the current too much in a speaker that’s too small and the coil overheats and moves imperfectly. This causes rattling, while the cone makes a flappy, papery sound. This happens more with lower sounds because they involve bigger, less frequent vibrations, meaning errors are bigger and more obvious, too.

Pump up the volume!

This is why big speakers are required to ensure big, deep sounds remain smooth with high fidelity. The connection between the size of the speaker and the loud, smooth sounds you can get from it is called its volumetric efficiency. The average old-fashioned loudspeaker, arranged as described above has a volumetric efficiency of around one. Some of the clever modifications made to them in the past have pushed this up as far as two, meaning some more modern speakers act like speakers twice their size.

No more rattle and hum – Sorry U2

With the conception of Gallo Acoustic’s new S2 technology, the company’s CDT speakers have a volumetric efficiency of 10. This means they act like a speaker with ten times their volume. Speaking as a team who are often trying to get big sounds from little spaces, that’s pretty blooming impressive!

While Gallo is very quiet about what its S2 technology involves, the foundation of its improved efficiency is in its CDT technology. This replaces the whole magnet setup with a semi-spherical layer of very clever aerospace material that expands when electricity is passed through it and is then pulled back into shape. This has roughly the same outcome as the magnets and paper cones, it vibrates and accurately reproduces sound. However, it does so without a tightly coiled spring that overheats and vibrates or a paper cone that flaps. Everything vibrates at once and nothing goes out of sync. The outcome is that you can boost the volume much further without fuzz, vibration, or rattle and hum. This is particularly true where low sounds are concerned. The speakers also age much better than legacy ones.

Glasto in your living room?

When a client wants to get great sound out of a small space, we’ll more often than not turn to Gallo Acoustics. To find out more about them, take a look at their rather unique website.

The company’s speakers will get you as close to Glastonbury in your living room as you realistically can get without turning an entire wall into a speaker stack. They’re especially great for achieving perfect fidelity on bedroom televisions, where less is very much more in size terms, as well as creating seemingly invisible surround sound and PA systems throughout the home.

If you want to achieve this in your home, and this article set your ears twitching, email us today for a chat.