Not sure if this is the place, but I need knowleadgable people abou the subject so here we go:

 

I study design and I'm thinking about building a hybrid headphone/computer speaker, and was thinking about the difficulties of this. I'm uncertain if it's at all possible, because I'd have to meet the sensitivity and dB output of both a regular speaker and a headphone speaker. And I can't actually design one (I'll only design the prototype around it), so I'd have to use something that's already out there. Sound quality is not really a concern, it just needs to be acceptable.

 

One thing I considered was to have a regular driver (sort of those used in laptops) with some kind of resistor that could be activated with a switch that would put it in "headphone mode", lowering the output volume. Do you guys have any idea of what I could use and if that's in fact possible?

 

Cheers!

Leo

I think the bigger problem is enclosure. Make it modular.

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The problem with speakers vs. headphones are that headphones are designed to sound right about a cm from the driver, whereas speakers are designed to sound right feet from the driver, so I would think you would need some sort of bass reflex enclosure to correct how wrong headphones sound when you lay them on your desk and turn up the volume.

Well, erm - try these! There's a good chance you'll save yourself a lot of trouble.

Depending on how loud you want to play, a pair of good size electrostatic headphone drivers can be used as a pair of desktop speakers too.  You'll need a woofer to compliment the low frequencies though.

 

 

 

 

 

That's a very good point Dusty, thanks! I actually thought about some kind of horn structure that could be attached to the drivers, but hadn't considered the bass in this thing.

 

RudeWolf, I wasn't aware of this headphone and it's an extremely good reference for my work, thank you! Found out that they work (not that well apparently, but it's still a good reference of how it could be made) with both an internal speaker and an external speaker.

 

chinsettawong, electrostatics unfortunately aren't an option since it's expensive and can't be plugged directly on a portable player and notebook... unfortunately for this work there's the need to completely turn off the audiophile side of us lol!