What's interesting to having easy access to the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America is that in every volume is a review of acoustically related patents. This ranges from speakers, to microphones and other transducers, ultrasound devices, toys incorporating acoustical devices, etc... Here's some links to what I found interesting from the March 2004 Issue: Surround design - #6,607,051 Stillwater Designs Square/Rectangular sub - # 6,611,604 Flat Speaker? - # 6,611,606 Interesting Port design - #6,618,488
What's interesting about some of these patents, are the ones that don't quite seem to make sense, at least as documented... ...in other words, you'd expect an engineer seeking a patent to understand all the ins and outs about what may give his invention some advantage or another - but then you look at say, the port-design patent. Do the drawings approximate experimentation prototypes? You might think so... if you look at the third drawing I believe, there's not a port diameter's worth of clearance between the bass reflex port and the speaker... which would change tuning, inherently. Also - if there was a large tube attached to the baffle - could the measured dB gains not be attributable simply to the fact that the baffle now has bracing - less lossy? The surround design also doesn't seem practical as drawn.. There would be air trapped between the two suspension rings, which would be compressed as the cone moved up and down... not exactly linear, and that wouldn't lead to the promised "improvements in sound quality". ...which might explain why you don't see a lot of these patents in actual product application. I'm just curious, what context were these patents being referenced in the journal?
Isn't this type of surround something we looked into and discussed a little while back? It's just a collection of acoustically related devices - kooky or not - with little comments by the editors on how they're supposed to work, and their general critiques on what they think of it...
So what did they think of it? Any of them voice the concerns that I did? And we had discussed that suspension design somewhere... But not two of them, that would result in trapped air between them. You'd need to perforate the inside or outside one (not both) to alleviate this effect.
Nope. It's just a little blurb about what it purports to do and it's effects. I think they just said it was "interesting" (re: the port design). As for the surround design, they just described it. Nothing more. I'll look in a few more issues and see if there's anything more interesting...
Here's a few more from the Jan and Feb issues of JASA... Spherical loudspeaker system with enhance performance #6,597,797 Spherical loudspeaker system (part II of above) #6,603,862 Speaker enclosure venturi expander #6,578,660 Loundspeaker feedback control system for reduced distortion, etc.... #6,584,204 Method for reproducing a stereophonic signal with 7+ speakersin a car using delay taps, amplitude controls, etc... #6,584,202
Maybe someone will find this interesting? JL - adjustable motor strength using field coils - #6,639,994 - I think it uses some sort of controller to control the field coil (and changing the motor strength) to be in time with the incoming audio signal Alpine - their design for a low distortion, high output power loudspeaker - #6,639,993 - Something to do with an S-shaped pole piece crossection reducing BL non-linearities...
Oh shoot hah, forgot that part JL - #6,639,994 - HERE Alpine - #6,639,993 - HERE It's easy enough to find them, just go to www.uspto.gov and do a search on the patent numbers. I'll keep doing it for consistency and ease for all y'all.
From the June 2004 issue.... Loudspeaker Damper by Matsushita # 6,655,495 Which incorporates a central flat portion into a traditional corrugated spider that's supposed to improve linearity and have better resistance to rocking. High Frequency Loudspeaker by Matsushita again... # 6,661,903 Shows a speaker with some kind of special clamped-edge cone and a way to attach the cone to the VC to minimize resonances... overall, to help achieve a quite flat frequency response from ~1500Hz to well above 20kHz...
Just don't be gay like bose and patent something stupid & universal like the 6th ordered bandpass. buncha' homo gays Jeff
Well, JL patented a design for a field coil, which I believe has been used in one form or other before... not sure of the new implentation tho And the flat spider probably has been done before too, tho not exactly sure... Maybe I should read these more thoroughly...
Another month, more patents Most interestingly for August, A Spider-less Speaker A method for producing a Magnesium-lithium alloy cone And a system for automatically adjusting your crossover to more closely matching your main speakers. Thank me.
For September... yeah, I'm a little late... and no time to get the links for you lazy ppl... # 6,578,658 Acoustic Chamber Integrated With Vehicle Door # 6,700,984 Non-Linearly Tapering Transmission Line Speakers # 6,704,425 System and method to Enhance Reproduction of Sub-Bass Frequencies # 6,711,269 Multifunction Acoustic Device (cell phone speaker)
JL's HO ported box patent #6,744,902 Acoustical wave method touch screen patent #6,741,237 Sony's Playstation patent - the portable one with LCD flip-up #6,749,507 Hitachi's method of putting a partition between two speakers so you can put the speakers closer together and still get 'good' stereo separation #6,731,765 IBM's speech recognition program - the thing that's special here is that they try to generate the correct punctuation without you having to specifically tell it to do the punctuation, instead, it 'listens' to the pauses and and other characteristics of your voice #6,718,303
