Inflatable Loudspeakers

fm6 sent in an article running at New Scientist talking about new technology that allows Inflatable Loud Speakers. The technology is apparently patented and there's not a lot of technical details, but I have to say the concept amuses me. And I somehow doubt that this technology will ever be used in high fidelity home systems.

Comments

Hype city

[HEbGb]

I think it's time to deflate the hype surrounding these things a bit.

They basically use an inflatable structure (not unlike a beachball) as a loudspeaker enclosure, and attach a flat-panel loudspeaker to the front. Voila.

Performance of these will be questionable, at best, and they will certainly not have the performance they're claiming. Utter nonsense. They've provided absolutely nothing to support their claims.

Loudspeaker enclosured are designed to be rigid for a reason - they're essentially used as baffles and resonant structures, that, when properly designed, will provide a reliable, efficient, output of sound. An inflatable loudspeaker will not have any rigidity, thereby eliminating its use as a baffle, and severely diminishing low frequency performance. Second, the fact that the air will be expected to leak over time will change the resonant structure significantly, eliminating any possibility of consistent performance, if it even could be attained in the first place.

Now, an inflatable loudspeaker might be a nice gimmick, but it will absolutely not be a performance product. Not even close.

This is all hype, folks, nothing to see here - move along.

Oh, they're apparently VC funded? Go figure with the outlandish claims!

Re:Almost Certainly Bullshit

[Reality Master 101]

If these inventors have some way to make a balloon as rigid as 3/4" birch plywood with closely spaced transverse braces, the article doesn't mention it.

I think most of us probably have an image of some cheap inflatable pool float, but we don't really know what materials this is made out of or what pressure it is inflated to. Put it this way, what if the enclosure were made of tire rubber and inflated to 250 pounds pressure, with cross braces etc? It would probably be pretty rigid.

Now, I doubt that scenerio that I just laid out would give you any weight or cost savings, but it's an idea of how this might go if that used more interesting materials. :)