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Speaker maker: Indiana limestone sounds good, looks good:



It built the Empire State Building and the Pentagon. It's been used in 27 state capitol buildings and the famous Biltmore Estate.
Now, Indiana limestone is being used to build stereo speakers.
Yes, speakers.
It seems the density and porosity of the stone mix just right to deliver perfect sound, according to Audiomasons Design Works, the Ann Arbor, Mich., company that is using Indiana limestone exclusively in its new products.
Plus, it looks pretty.
"They are meant to be designer objects," said Vince Alessi, principal designer and cofounder of Audiomasons. "They are as sculptural as they are functional."
But the function was a major part of the design.
Limestone, besides being highly sustainable, is very dense, but not too dense. And it's porous, but not too porous.
"You get this perfect balance embodied in limestone more than any other stone," Alessi said.
He should know. A biochemist who wrote his thesis on molecular-scale spectroscopic physics, Alessi was the one who got down and dirty and tested all sorts of stones.
Marble turned out to be beautiful, but it rings too much, and it's too dense. You get the cave effect, Alessi said.
Travertine fuzzes too much and "has a bunch of holes in it."
Concrete? It's ugly, and it's not sustainable, he claims.
Then came the testing of limestone, which is primarily quarried in the south-central part of Indiana between Bedford and Bloomington.
"I found that Indiana limestone is where it is," Alessi said.
Of course, said Todd Schnatzmeyer, executive director of the Indiana Limestone Institute of America.
In addition to the attributes Alessi mentioned, limestone has its own warranty, of sorts.
"You build something out of Indiana limestone, and you expect it to last a lifetime," Schnatzmeyer said.
It's also malleable, so it's easy to produce different shapes out of the stone and carve elements.
But speakers? Sure, Schnatzmeyer said.
"It's because of the density of the stone. Limestone is 144 pounds per cubic foot," he said. "For something like a speaker, that would make a good sound quality."
Evidently, other speaker companies have yet to realize that. Audiomasons says it is the first company in the United States to concoct a speaker from limestone.
Indianapolis-based speaker company Klipsch said it doesn't use limestone and declined to comment for the story.

A quick Google search found limestone being used to build speakers at just one other company -- StoneAge Lighting in Ontario, Canada.
But it's not pure limestone. It's a mix of limestone and granite.

http://www.indystar.com/article/20110918/BUSINESS04/309180002/Speaker-maker-Indiana-limestone-sounds-good-looks-good