If you like to sound and music, you then recognize that the speaker’s quality is one of the foremost elements that decide the pleasantness of the sound. Speakers have not seemed to alternate as a whole lot as different matters in our lives, including computer systems and cell phones, but are they unchanging? To discover, you can explore today’s patents provided inside the sound audio system’s crucial place. Foreign inventors and foreign countries are the maximum commonplace winners of sufferers, especially from Asian nations. This became now not the most effective real of application patents, which cover enhancements in an audio system and layout patents, which cowl the inventive designs of speaker shelves.
A quick review of speaker structure facilitates to see wherein the modern-day improvements are being made. The sound-producing mechanism of the speaker is held in the vicinity through a frame. The frame consists of: a basket, a smooth donut shaped gasket, and plates that convey the magnet’s load. There are seven additives of this mechanism. These factors are the magnet, the steel center, a voice coil wrapped around a mild weight bobbin, the cone or diaphragm. The voice coil and cone/diaphragm are a unitary assembly and held in position by a speaker’s surround and the spider (also called a damper). When present-day flows via the voice coil, it’s far pushed ahead by using electromagnetic pressure.
Out of the 27 application patents inside the past 18 months, the best range belongs to the voice coil, eight. The next most innovative factor is the cone (also referred to as a diaphragm), which has 6. The 0.33 is the spider (also known as a damper) with 4 innovations. Followed by using these are the basket (2), magnet (2), gasket (1), horn (1), and surround (1). A patent becomes even issued for a brand new kind of dust cap (1) that disperses strain waves with less interference. The dominance of voice coil patents would possibly be proof that that is the crucial factor because it is wherein electrical electricity is converted into mechanical strength for the motive of pushing air.
In addition to improvements that targeted components, 10 software patents worried the main restructuring of the speaker. Examples of this consist of the usage of bar magnets or voice coils embedded inside the cone. In reality, the general public of improvements involving general speaker structure was for flatter speakers. Large research and engineering effort spent on developing flat speakers have become a clear different fashion inside the past 18 months. This all points to at least one aspect: the speaker of the future will be flat. At least that’s what the manufacturers think. This is in all likelihood to be based on market research that indicates clients vying for flat speakers to go along with their flat-panel TVs.
An instance of innovation in the flat audio system comes from a patent by using Sony. This design produces a speaker with 5 toes tall, 3 feet huge, and wherein the sound is generated employing vibration motors that push a nonporous fabric. There isn’t any voice coil and no cone. The Sony patent includes rack and pinion gears to modify the place of the vibration on the cloth for the finest sound. We all want our flat-panel TVs, and inside the destiny, we might also all want our flat-panel audio system.
Freelance inventing isn’t always dead. The clear leaders in speaker innovation are freelance inventors and the Pioneer Company (Table 1). Combined, those make up forty-one % of all new utility patents in the beyond 18 months. Following these leaders are Sony, Matsushita, and the collaboration of Pioneer Co. And Honda Co., so as of the range of patients. These latter organizations make up 26% of all new utility patents. All of the patents had been awarded to for-profit entities except one lone patent presented to National Taiwan University.
Design patents are often for the look of speaker cabinets, giving the inventor rights to a certain type of speaker appearances. Standard speaker cabinet designs had a clear lead over the opposite types with a frequency of 9 patients within one year. The other kinds of design patents are domestic theatre shelves, vehicle speakers, remote acoustic hailing gadgets, iPod docking stations, and direction, pc speakers. Other sorts include microphone shields, portable audio system, subwoofer enclosures, tweeter enclosures, and even speaker stands. The top five layout kinds indexed above account for 59% of the speaker designs.
Out of the patents with design patents, fifty-seven % have been for just the best 1 speaker; fifty-seven. 1%. Designs with the audio system had 26.5% of the patents, with fewer patents that worried more than two speakers. The design with the largest range of speakers had 8. This speaker was by way of Moog Inc. For a far-off acoustic hailing tool. These navy gadgets are for delivering audible warning messages to ability threats at stand-off distances.
The main groups within the speaker layout patents have been Sony inside the pinnacle slot, observed using Samsung, SDI Technologies Inc., Moog Inc., Hosiden, and Panasonic. These six corporations accounted for 69% of all of the speaker patents inside the beyond 12 months. Even though the two leaders are foreign, there had been additionally 3 domestic agencies inside the pinnacle six for speaker layout patents, which’s excellent too for American engineers to see.
One discouraging element of the latest speaker patents for American engineers is the predominance of patients through overseas inventors over home inventors. The percent of home application patents for speakers changed into a measly 11%. Out of the 27 overall patents that were reviewed, 24 of them have been foreign, whilst the best 3of them had been domestic.
About speaker design patents that concentrate on speaker enclosures, the story is comparable, with forty-three % of speaker design patents going to domestic inventors. Although American inventors no longer account for the general public of the patents in speaker layout, it’s miles clean that they’re extra inquisitive about speaker layout than in speaker characteristics.
Today’s electromagnetic speaker has had an equal shape largely since it changed into patented in 1875 through Alexander Graham Bell. The trusty speaker won’t have been the target of radical technical innovations for some time. Still, the most up-to-date patents offered show that radical design and performance enhancements may be in our future.
