I got some dead hard drives I've been popping + I stumbled on some Youtube videos = My own crappy phone cam video about hard drive speakers.



The voice coils in the drive head works in the same way as ones in speakers do. I traced the the connection from the coils to the controller board and used dmm probes plugged to a CMoy's output. The really old 5.25" hdd has a coil impedance of 13 ohms, 2 ohms more than the laptop hard drive I had and 3 ohms less than IEMs. The 5.25" one sounds louder than the laptop drive, with all volumes maxed. I don't have a power amp, which could maybe drive these 'speakers' better.

I only have jazz, techno and rock music in my playlists. Jazz music sounds the best as low frequency signals are inaudible. With foobar's tone generator playing 1 Hz, you can see the head moving back and forth each second.

WOw... that's really impressive...

eokboy, u using the vibration of the arm to generate sound?
did u remove the magnetic plate?

ive always thought this is so cool... ive stumbled upon the site a few months ago... they were using 3 HDDs... of different sizes. and they tested it using some cheesy pr0n music

Yes and no. The magnets are needed for it to work, like speakers. Even similar to some headphones, rare earth NIB magnets. And we all know from SPM Fizik that anything that can vibrate will produce sounds. I can hear frequencies up till ~10,000 Hz. >200 Hz you can no longer see the arm vibrating, yet it does.


Internet cookies for those who figured out the jazz artist

This post has been edited by Eokboy: Dec 28 2006, 11:38 AM

no the magnetic plate i mean, the plate we use to store data...
disc, magnetic disc...

Ohh the platter. You can see the probes and my fan reflected off the shiny surface.

I'm listening to a stereo setup now. Left channel old 5.25" hdd, right channel 20GB 3.5" hdd. The old hdd sounds louder.

sorry, really don't understand..
can ask more? i am very interested to make one..
i connect the output to Arm's motor / Magnetic reading/writting head / platter motor?

You need to find the two wires leading to the coil in the read/write arm. Then connect your amp to them.

http://www.afrotechmods.com/cheap/hdspeakers/hdspeakers.htm

This is bleady cool.....,that's what i call experimenting.....

if you had 2x 2.5" discs maybe you can hang it from a headphone handle or something (they'll look like these Stax)

It looks like he's got one of em old nokia models on each side of his head....

http://www.afrotechmods.com/cheap/hdspeakers/hdspeakers.htm

the site i was talking about... even has a guide... go to the bottom of the page to see the videos

i tried this project a few years back, it worked! pretty awful sound though..
hehe

If I press the head, I can hear the missing bass through the table.

Taking a shot at the jazz artist

Miles Davis?

Nope.

uhhrk, I posted the answer in Youtube.