Slashdot Mirror
New Entrant In the Race For Wafer-Thin Speakers
Smivs notes another technology aiming to become the ubiquitous flat, flexible loudspeaker in public and private spaces. This one comes out of the University of Warwick, in the UK, and may reach the market before year's end. We've discussed other attempts on this problem over the years, including a touch-sensitive display that is also a speaker, and an approach based on nanotubes. "The arrangement also allows for highly directional and accurate sound, say the researchers. The speakers would be ideal in public places such as passenger terminals since the sound quality does not deteriorate as much as conventional speakers... The flat speakers are relatively inexpensive to manufacture, say the researchers, and can be printed with design or concealed inside ceilings."
Planar speakers have been around for decades. Magnepan is one of the oldest, along with Martin Logan, Quad, SoundLab and the defunct Apogee. Sota and Monsoon also made planars for a while.
The new variations on planar technologies are, mainly, refinements. The researchers at Warwick basically figured out how to embed the motor in the planar substrate itself, saving a few more millimeters in thickness.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
No bass, no deal.
Subwoofers work. The thing about bass is that unlike tones in the middle and high ranges, bass is not very directional at all. In fact, you can hide a subwoofer almost anywhere, and as long it's in the same room you won't notice a difference.
My blog
Planar speakers have been around for decades. Magnepan is one of the oldest, along with Martin Logan, Quad, SoundLab and the defunct Apogee. Sota and Monsoon also made planars for a while.
Yup. I was one of the people who designed and built the Monsoon-branded planar magnetic speakers. Some of the technology was licensed from http://www.eminent-tech.com/main.html.
We also looked at electrostatic speakers, including the "two sheets of conductive material with a compliant spacer" variety. It's easy to make a proof-of-concept device that makes some sound, much harder to do it properly. Problems include:
- High voltages (10s to 100s of volts) required, difficult to produce and a potential safety issue for consumer products.
- Air is surprisingly incompressible when you're dealing with small volumes.
- A single-sided electrostatic speaker is non-linear. As the two plates of the capacitor get closer, the capacitance and the attractive force increase.
- It's hard to get decent bass out of a planar speaker. The coupling to the air drops off very sharply below a certain frequency (depending on the size of the panel).