Ten thousand turns: how we test a dial
Speaker One has one control. We turn it, press it and hold it on a rig until it has done ten years of work.
Theo Akande5 min read
A speaker with one dial lives or dies by that dial. You turn it for volume, press it to pause and hold it to pair, so it is the part your hand knows best and the part that gets the most wear.
The rig
Our test rig is a small motor, a load cell and a rubber fingertip on an arm. It turns the dial a quarter turn each way, presses it, holds it for two seconds and lets go, then starts again. It runs day and night in the corner of the workshop and it is surprisingly quiet.
We count a year of use as about a thousand turns and three hundred presses, from logs our early testers kindly shared. A dial passes when it has done ten thousand turns and three thousand presses and still feels the same as a new one.
Feeling the same is the hard part. A dial can work perfectly and still feel tired.
What we changed
The first batch of dials passed on function but lost their click at around six thousand turns. The detent spring was wearing a groove in the plastic carrier. We moved to a steel carrier and a slightly softer spring, which made each click a little quieter and kept it the same for the full ten thousand.
Every Speaker One shipped since March 2024 has the steel carrier. If yours is older and the click has faded, the dial is covered by the warranty, and we will send a new one with a card that shows you how to fit it.
Theo Akande, Co-founder, engineering