While Panasonic is portrayed the innovator here, they're really just following a trend that has been around for a while. Speaker cones using bamboo fiber have been available for some time from Taiwan-based Tang Band (www.tb-speaker.com). They have at least four models that I'm aware of which use bamboo-fiber cones. While we're on the subject of green speaker cone materials: cones made from banana plant fiber have been available for many years from Japanese company Fostex (www.fostexinternational.com). And then of course there are the famous Tone Tubby hemp-coned speakers from the somewhat oddly-named A Brown Soun (www.tonetubby.com). Lastly, there's the Canadian company Hemp Acoustics (www.hempacoustics.com) which has quite a line of hemp-coned drivers. There may even be others I've omitted - as you can see, the idea of exotic natural fiber cones is a compelling one in the world of high-performance audio.

So as I understand it the "fabric" used in the speakers - the vibrating medium - is made out of some sort of paper with bamboo or hemp or other sustainable material.

I'm not sure why you'd have more dynamic range with paper made with these materials than regular paper. What properties does bamboo add that contribute to the vibrational sensitivity of the paper-material?

Can one purchase the material seperately from a wholesaler somewhere, or are these speaker manufacturers making it themselves?

Hi Rick: The choice of speaker cone materials doesn't have to do with dynamic range per se. Different cone materials will have varying mechanical properties (i.e. Young's modulus, self-damping, etc.) which will affect the sound character of the cone, particularly when the cone is in its vibrational breakup region. As for sensitivity, that is directly affected by the cone's mass. So if something like bamboo, hemp, or compressed belly-button lint is ultralight while being very stiff and having high internal damping, so much the better.

Other than that, there is a lot of marketing going on: manufacturers will try to associate all of the desirable "green" attributes with something like hemp cones, and these factors may or may not be actually related to the material's physical properties that would actually influence the sound.

Ergo, by extention of this reasoning, natural fiber cones are purported to sound "natural" because everything from nature must be good, and sound, being a natural phenomenon, would very much prefer to be produced by something like hemp or bamboo (as opposed to magnesium, thermoplastic, or titanium). So much more so if the sound one is reproducing originated in some kind of "organic" instrument in the first place, like a Japanese kodo drum or a hand-carved wooden recorder. One has to be wary of this specious reasoning.

BTW I am not at all discounting these natural materials as excellent speaker cone materials, I'm only saying that one needs to be aware of why they are good or bad from a physics point of view, as opposed to automatically assuming they're good simply because they're natural and renewable.

I don't know if these natural materials are available as cones, but you could try any of the standard vendors of soft parts for speakers, such as NuWay.

I did not know that I could purchase speakers with bamboo! That is so sweet to know because I am in the mode to buy a new system sinc eI do not have one, any suggestions? I really like the smoothness from my speakers and I have been able to hear paper cones before, senstive ears. Let me know!

Hi Gibby... I don't know of any commercial systems right now that use bamboo-coned drivers, but you could try a google search. If you're really interested, the company I work for produces custom speaker systems; email me about it if you like.

http://www.bamboospeakers.com

that site does not work anymore... could not find anything on ebay either:-(

This is for Gibby and anyone else interested. THere are quite a few companies out there that use our speakers but often they dont advertise and I am afraid we cannot devulge who they are to do us being bound by our NDA with them. But, you can go to www.planet10hi-fi.com and our own website and www.e-speakers.com or www.solen.ca and recieved easy kits which use our driver at very reasonable prices.

Hope this helps
Hemp Acoustics