When you turn down or up the volume on devices with either a wheel or button, what actually happens that allows it to sound quieter or louder?
In: Technology
The speaker holes get bigger or smaller depending on the buttons or direction of knob spinning and the phase of the moon
There are various ways to do it. One is a potentiometer (if the knob has a hard low stop and hard high stop it may be like this), or it could use essentially micro switches to send pulses that the device uses to count up or down. There are probably other ways to do it as well.
I’ma tell you what I know, because I made quite a few of these circuits in the past year, someone more knowledgeable should critique me.
Your knob is a potentiometer, which is essentially a variable resistor. By turning the knob, you will either increase or decrease the resistance within the circuit. Due to ohm’s law, this will also affect your current and voltage.
By decreasing the resistance (turning up the volume) you are increasing the voltage and current. This increased voltage will go and power the electromagnetic vibrations within your speaker.
My question is, how does that speaker actually being “louder” happen? Is it just from the speaker operating at a higher or lower frequency? If someone could explain what’s happening within the speaker itself that makes us interpret the sound as louder I’d appreciate it.
Wildly simplified:
Imagine a strip or a rod, which has some electrical resistance.
One wire is connected to the end, the other slides up and down on the strip.
When you slide far away, the resistance between the 2 wires is bigger, and gets smaller as you slide the other way.
(Potentiometers are a bit more complex than this, but this is the overall simple concept of it)
Latest Answers