Not to sound like a complete fool, but I thought it was just magnets wiggling because the wire told them to. How do you make the magnets wiggle better?
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Well, like any other product you are not just paying for the components, in the case of a speaker The Enclosure, Diaphragm, Cone, Voice Coil, Dust Cap, Basket, Gaskets, Magnet, you are also paying for the time and cost that went into the production of the speaker, the testing and the expensive process of designing them in the first place.
I’ll give a couple of examples.
The magnets move at a finite speed. So, even though the signal is telling the magnets to move, it takes time for them to actually do so. The slower they move in response to the signal, the messier the final sound is. So, if you use bigger coils of wire or lighter magnets, you can get the magnets to respond faster.
Also, the magnets are attached to cones that actually move the air. These cones need to very stiff so that they don’t distort the sound wave that they’re trying to generate. If you can make a stiffer cone, you can make better sound.
These are just two examples. There a lots of ways to make a speaker better.
Speakers are made of magnets, wire and a cone (and a box if you’re talking about free-standing speakers).
Cheap speakers use weak magnets, cheap wire and flimsy paper cones (and flimsy fiberboard boxes.) And there is barely any engineering behind the size/shape/weight of all those parts and how they “wiggle” the air, so a lot of sound frequencies get left out when the speaker is trying to generate them.
Nice, expensive speakers use strong magnets, high-quality wire, sturdy-but-lightweight synthetic cones, and boxes made of dense, sturdy wood or plastic of a precise size and shape. On top of that, acoustic engineers spend a lot of time making sure all those parts work well together and produce a very wide range of sound frequencies in a very consistent manner. That wide range of sound frequencies is what gives a “rich” or “high-quality” sound.
With good speakers you’re not just paying for the materials, you’re also paying for all the research and engineering that went into designing that speaker to make it sound good.
(like the difference between an 2.0L economy car engine and a 2.0L sports car engine. Same size, but the sports car engine is a lot stronger and faster.)
Like how is it achieved or what makes it sound better?
In terms of what makes it sound better, you have deeper bass, better linearity, higher max SPL, lower distortion, better directivity control, less compression, etc.
For making components better, it’s all refinement and R&D and budget. [Here is a video chat with one of the designers of one of the best midwoofers in existence](https://youtu.be/o90AYyceaMI).
Sometimes it’s nothing mechanical/electrical. Chamfered or even rounded cabinet edges instead of straight 90° edges will sound better. Having a port tube with exponential horn openings/exits instead of a straight tube will sound better.
Most of the difference comes down to the speaker cabinet engineering. Remove any speaker from it’s enclosure and it will sound very different and usually not good even expensive ones. Engineers use different shapes and materials to move the sound waves in intentional ways so that they sound good by the time they reach the ears. There’s quite a complicated science to it and all sorts of different ideas, which is why there are so many different speaker designs- even just 2 plain rectangular box lookin speakers can be set up completely differently inside with different size/angle of baffles and different style/placement of ports and different array/placement of speakers. Other people already mentioned the cone materials and magnet quality. There’s also the electronics to consider, speakers will often have a crossover built in that send incoming audio signals above a certain frequency to the tweeters and below a certain frequency to the woofers. The quality of the components and design of the circuit has a big impact on what you’re hearing. Expensive speakers are designed by someone who went to school for this and spent decades designing speakers, they use the parts and materials that they think will best accomplish the sound they’re after.
It should be noted that what you are likely referring to as “magnets” are NOT the things doing the “wiggling”. The voice coil is what is doing the “wiggling” and causes the speaker cone to “wiggle” with it.
Now the voice coil IS a magnet (an electromagnet), but when one refers to a “magnet” they usually mean a permanent magnet (that big hunk of metal at the bottom of the speaker). When you send a current through the voice coil it creates a magnetic field which pushes or pulls against the permanent magnet which remains stationary.
Cheap speakers are cheap because they’re using the least amount/quality of materials, and they also tend to be done with a minimal of engineering–if it makes a sound that’s all they care about.
High quality speakers will have stronger magnets, and larger gauge wiring. This allow for high current pushing against a stronger magnetic field–you can drive heavier cones and the speaker can respond quicker to signals. Stiffer cones can provide superior performance since you’re not getting undesired overtones due to flexing of the cone. Cheap speakers use paper cones, more expensive ones use stiffer composites. The box that a speaker is placed in can have a dramatic effect on the frequency response. You can coax more bass out of a speaker by designing the box it is placed in. A larger throw than normal can allow the speaker to “throw” more air making it louder.
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