RESOURCES

The Solution
Was Sake
Strange ingredients make
a better loudspeaker
BY TEKLA S. PERRY

EUREKA: How can wood be made pliable enough

to form into loudspeaker cones? That question
stumped engineers for decades until Satoshi
Imamura discovered the answer: rice wine.
BRUCE OSBORNE

April 2004 | IEEE Spectrum | NA 51

 AUDIOPHILES: Toshikatsu Kuwahata [right] and Satoshi
Some engineering problems take Imamura developed these wood-cone speakers at JVC
TOOLS & TOYS

longer to solve than others. Inventors in Yokohama, Japan. Larger speakers are planned.
struggled for decades to find the right
filament material, before Thomas He thought he had the solution once, two
Edison tried carbon and made a prac- decades ago, when he took a pile of paper-
tical light bulb. thin sheets of wood and successfully glued
Toshikatsu Kuwahata, an engineer them together into a cone. Unfortunately,
at the audio factory of JVC (Victor developing an economical manufacturing
Company of Japan Ltd.), in Yokohama, process proved impossible.
is no stranger to such lengthy strug- Then, five years ago, a colleague, Satoshi
gles. He wrestled for more than 20 years with Imamura, was dining at one of his favorite
his own personal challenge—making a restaurants. Imamura contemplated the
speaker cone that could be manufactured in texture and malleability of the dried squid
quantity out of wood. he was chewing. He asked the waiter how it
The cone is the part of the speaker that had been prepared, and the waiter explained
vibrates to produce sound. It is typically that the squid had been soaked in sake.
made out of paper pulp, polypropylene, a smoother frequency response. This is one Imamura and Kuwahata tried soaking
polyester, or some similar pliable material.
of the main reasons that wood remains a the speaker wood in sake. It worked! (They
But wood, Kuwahata knew, has qualities popular material for musical instruments. also tried Suntory whiskey; it didn’t.
that could make it a superior choice for But unlike the parts of an instrument, Imamura isn’t sure why, but he theorizes
sound reproduction. For one thing, sound the material used for a speaker cone must that there is something unique about the
propagates very quickly through wood, be severely deformed to form the required acids in sake, which is simply fermented,
which means that the speaker can produce shape. And when Kuwahata tried to form as opposed to those in whiskey, which is
a wide range of frequencies. Wood also hasthe cone out of wood, even thin sheets of distilled after fermentation.)
an internal damping effect, which leads towood, it cracked. The sake makes the wood sheets mal-
leable but—crucially—without
affecting their strength. The
sheets are then infused with
YOU NEVER KNEW YOU NEEDED IT resin and a mold-release agent.
TVs that light up the room—even when they’re off The resin prevents the wood
from absorbing moisture, help-
It’s a classic image, the But lighting as a by- flat-screen televisions that ing it to retain its shape in high
flickering light of the TV product of television has are also room lights. temperature and humidity long
providing the only light in a always been unintentional. Philips’s Ambilight technol- after it’s been molded into the
dark room, the faces in the Until now, anyway. ogy projects background shape of a speaker cone.
room changing color as the Philips Electronics NV light from the rear of the This year, JVC introduced its
TV screen changes. this month began shipping television onto the wall, first wood-cone speaker prod-
creating a halo around the uct based on Imamura’s process,
television, which softly the EX-A1, an executive desk-
lights the room. The viewer top-entertainment system with
can adjust the color choice 30-watt wood-cone speakers.
and brightness via remote JVC expects to use the wood-
control (whether the televi- cone speaker technology in
sion itself is on or off). Or larger audio systems in the fu-
the system can be set to an ture. The cones in this luxuri-
automatic mode, in which ous model are made of birch,
the lighting is continuously and the cabinets are solid cherry.
adjusted in relation to the They are packaged with a com-
image on the screen and to bination amplifier, tuner, and
TOP: BRUCE OSBORNE; BOTTOM: PHILIPS ELECTRONICS

the overall brightness of multiformat DVD/CD player,

the room, determined by
built-in sensors.
The Ambilight feature is
available in the Philips
Matchline 32-, 37-, and
42-inch LCD FlatTVs (priced
at US $6000, $8000,
and $10 000) and in the
company’s 50-inch plasma
FlatTV ($10 000). —T.S.L.
with both audio and video
outputs. Most important, the
sound is seductive, even in a
noisy environment.
The system ships in May,
at a suggested retail price of
US $550. Back in Maebashi,
Japan, his mission accom-
plished, Kuwahata has an-
nounced his retirement. ■

52 IEEE Spectrum | April 2004 | NA