Hi all,
Since I didn’t find any topic about unusable Atom Echo audio volume correction alternatives, I wanted to share the way I increased 13$ Voice Assistant audio volume, even though probably everyone already did better than this.
Simply Atom Echo’s enclosure is too small to act as a resonance box.
I just took the chip and the speaker out of the enclosure, handmade a wooden piece with a hole to stick the speaker into, a base to have it standing and put everythjng toghether using few drops of superglue. To fix the alimentation cable I used 2 small screws and 5cm of metal cable.
To also let Echo hear me clearly, I left the back completely open, just front panel and base.
This way I can clearly hear Atom Echo answer from quite far away, meaing i can really use it, even when room gets noisy and also Echo hears better.
I achieved even better results using hard thick paper (like the one shoe boxes are generally made of) for the front panel. I used both the cap and the bottom of a wallet box and made two resonance boxes. It’s easier to build, but more fragile.
Anyway, any hard material smooth plate should be able to act as resonance surface, the harder and thinner, the better.
Also dimensions matter, the larger, the better, but I noticed that circa between 50 and 100 square cm are enough for my needs and beyond that, I’m afraid that the mass would become too much to be vibrated by little speaker’s energy, so after my experiments and with materials I tested, I guess a 5/10cm x 10cm x0.1cm front plate is the correct choice.
You only need to be able to punch a hole to let the most of the Echo speaker’s front exposed (for higher frequencies) if not there yet, being careful to leave an edge to stick the speaker’s edge into or to glue it to.
Theoretically the best result should be achieved with metal or glass plates because since they’re hard, they can be kept very thin while maintaining their shape = higher ratio between surface and mass.
An useless CD would be a good choice for instance.
It’s also important to remember that the junction between Echo’s speaker and front panel must be very firm, otherwise vibrations won’t transmit to the resonance surface properly.
The glue strip that remains on the speaker’s edge when detaching it from its original enclosure is perfect for the job if you stick it on something very smooth and lucid. I used this method with hard paper boxes since inside they are so.
With the wooden plate I decided to remove the glue strip toghether with the tissue covering the speaker to slot the speaker because I like it more.
I posted images for better explaination.
Wooden plate where the speaker is sticked
Paper box where the speaker is glued
Bye