Propeller Head Plaza

Digital Loudspeakers

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It would seem that current advancements in the hobby are currently revolving around a small digital revolution with the sudden take off in the sound quality of digital sources, signal manipulation and amplifiers (all having a good thirty years or more of existence but only now really coming into their own). Now, there's a new prospect of advancement: the digital loudspeaker.

While "digital ready" loudspeakers have been around since the advent of CDs, the label was just a marketing ploy and at best merely representative of slightly better frequency response and distortion characteristics. "Digital loudspeakers" are something different entirely. Rather than just using the basic analog component chain, a true digital loudspeaker can take a PCM or similar digital data stream directly from the source and without any significant mode change, separate the bits, run them directly through PWM amplifiers to an array of transducers that (via inertia) make the only digital-analog conversion since the microphone preamp.

Just think of how many component issues keeping the music signal in a digital form (complete with error correction to avoid degradation) could be avoided keeping the music in the digital domain. The praise found with the inexpensive Panasonic digital receivers may just be a hint of that.

Trouble is, I know of only a couple of small groups that are currently attempting to produce a viable digital loudspeaker. Current limitations appear to reside in the transducers with the needs for them to be broadband, low distortion, compact, sufficiently inexpensive to be used in arrays from 16 to 1024 as well as the issues regarding driver integration of the very complicated array. Unfortunately, there isn't much information out there as to what's coming of these efforts.

For good information regarding digital loudspeakers, I would recommend taking a look at these three patents:

US6373955
US6967541
US7215788

So, anyone have more information? Thoughts for "technical and scientific discussion"?

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