On 1/26/08 12:49 AM, in article ,
"Don" wrote:

Many people
say the Alnico magnets give better sound than ceramic magnets, so look for
that. Since each speaker only gets 15 watts, they are designed for
efficiency instead of long throw, and fill an auditorium or basketball court
with ease.

Many people say a lot of things that have little basis in fact. There's
nothing in an alnico magnet that will make a speaker sound better. This myth
probably came from the fact that the early speakers with ceramic magnets
were cheap junk. They had no clue how to design a proper motor system using
ceramic, so the drivers were lousy. But by the late 70's, alnico got so
expensive that virtually everyone stopped using it and everyone went to
ceramic. Once they figured out how to properly use the magnets, the
performance was at least as good, if not better, than the alnico systems
they replaced. And even if alnico magnets have slightly better immunity to
flux modulation, a modern ceramic magnet system can be designed to work just
as well. Alnico also has the distinct disadvantage of being susceptible to
demagnetization from the voice coil. By any objective standard, today's
speakers with ceramic magnets absolutely trounce anything made with alnico
back then. And btw, today the Chinese have a monopoly on alnico, and it's
more expensive than ever.