Calm down, calm down. It was simply a manner of speech. No, they haven’t developed the all too popular garments that render the wearer invisible, but we are about to take a look at some pretty spiffy technology that will doubtlessly save you some space in the family room as well as give you something to brag about to your somewhat less technologically inclined friends: “invisible” speakers.
Though the company didn’t have a very large presence at CES this year, Emo Labs toted a bit of technology that (I hope) will soon start rolling the stone into becoming a standard included with many devices porting flat-panel screens, especially laptops and netbooks, desktop monitors, television screens, and perhaps even cell phones and other ultra mobile devices.
Traditional speakers are essentially cones vibrated by an electromagnet, taking up real estate that is often valuable when your living room is small or when you’re carrying around a lappy, not to mention causing a fuss when you’ve got the subwoofer too close to the old CRT television. What all the fuss about these so-called “invisible” speakers is that this new speaker design implements a membrane vibrated by motors situated around the edge. So, in layman’s terms, what we have here is a transparent speaker of sorts that can be placed on an existing flat panel screen, giving superb sound quality with a fraction of the space that traditional speakers would have used. The bigger the screen you have, the bigger the membrane you have, the better the sound quality.
Not sold on the idea? Certainly membrane speakers will catch on, especially in the notebook market where the space that was once reserved for speakers can be used for more important components, but the quality of sound just can’t match something as bulky and expensive as the shiny, attractive speakers we pay through the nose for today, right? Perhaps– but then perhaps not. According to Harry McCracken who witnessed some of the prototype speakers on display at CES, “they showed me a Diana Krall concert on an ordinary-looking medium-sized flatscreen TV, and the sound was big enough that I wondered if they’d tucked a multi-piece speaker system with a subwoofer out of sight. Another demo involving a 15-inch LCD such as the ones built into notebooks was equally impressive.”
I’ve never heard of Emo Labs before, but it sounds to me as if the big fatties of quality speaker production are going to have a run for their money once these are released into the wild. Let’s just hope that Emo won’t put a depressing Gothic look to their products– I may just have to slit my wrists.
Laptop speakers suck, generally speaking, so I don’t think the bar would be that high to improve on the quality. I hope this technology lives up to its promise. I wonder how different the power consumption is on one of these vs the electromagnet-type speaker?
anything to reduce the number of things on my desk!!
where do i sign?
Can it be combined with touchscreen?
Sounds great, but I wonder how well this meshes with the budding trend toward touch screens?
Edit: Jinx, you owe me a coke
Edited 2009-01-29 04:17 UTC
This produces mono sound, right? Or at least, each membrane is one speaker, so if you have a membrane on a monitor, it’ll be mono. This is certainly useful, but it won’t replace my desktop speakers.
True, but why not just have two of them on the monitor, one per channel? It wouldn’t give you maximum stereo separation, but you’re not going to have that from monitor speakers anyway.
I agree this may not replace desktop speakers, but it sure would be awesome to have in a netbook or other laptop.
Well, to have two speakers, or membranes, you’d have to have one covering your screen’s left half and another its right. A seam would show in the middle. Also, I don’t know how this works, so you might need those motors on all four sides of each membrane.
Edited 2009-01-29 08:17 UTC
Hi,
I’m thinking that a large plane like that wouldn’t be too good for high frequency sounds, but might be perfect for low frequency sounds.
I’m thinking small tweeters on the left/right, smallish midrange electromagnetic speakers on the left/right, and one bass speaker built into the LCD screen.
Cheers,
Brendan
Dual-screen laptops are just around the corner – do I smell a match made in heaven? 🙂
So to get proper stereo sound you would sort of have to look in the middle between the two screens?
No, No, No…
You look at the middle screen. You just need 2 17″ screens for the left and right tweeter plus your main 23″ screen for the subwoofer.
Think of it this way; for home audio you could purchase “Picture Frames” with build in speakers (you’ll need to supply your own artwork) which you would then locate around the room for surround sound. The Big Screen TV becomes the subwoofer. I don’t see any issues with this setup.
Anything is better then the tinny mono speaker found in most laptops.
PS: This can’t be used with a touchscreen. (It could but touching the screen would mute the sound).
From this article
http://www.designnews.com/article/162563-Screening_Emo_Labs_New_Spe…
“On either end, piezo actuators tug on the membrane at an extremely fast rate to create terrific (my words … I heard it) stereo sound. The left speaker is on that side of the membrane while the other side houses the right side speaker (remember, the membrane is the speaker. There are no speaker speakers, if you will).”
Obviously not as good as speakers placed all over a room, but just as good or better than regular speakers attached to the side of the monitor.