Infinite Algorithms

As worldwide shipments of TVs exceed 200 million units per year, a significant shift in TV size is taking place. While the average screen size is increasing, most TVs are also becoming thin and flat. The old cathode ray tube technology is being replaced by Plasma and LCD with OLED on the horizon. This leads to power-efficient, brighter displays with high contrast ratios and a very large number of pixels. While this is all very good for the consumers' eyes, it is bad news for their ears.

For the past twenty five years, TVs had only two channel stereo sound. When HDTV broadcasting became available, it offered the potential for excellent surround sound quality, as did digital cable, digital satellite, DVD and Blu-ray disc players. Yet TV makers kept on building the TVs with only two channel audio.

When the flat panels arrived, TV makers embraced the "thin" paradigm by providing small speakers and even smaller amplifiers to drive them. In many designs, the speakers are hidden behind tiny grilles that muffle the sound. In some cases, the speakers face downward, backwards or sideways. And they sound terrible!

Driven by flat TV designs, the thin flat speakers are here to stay. The challenge is to improve the sound quality and provide surround sound capability within the confines of the thin world of TVs. The ideal solution is to package audio and video together so that the end consumer does not have to deal with additional components, remote controls and associated installation, wiring, room remodeling problems.

We applied our algorithmic know-how to this problem and have found an attractive solution with good sound quality and great surround sound imaging. It is power-efficient and compact enough to be placed inside a flat panel TV's thin frame - either vertically or horizontally or in both directions. There is nothing quite like it today and we believe it will change the way TVs are made in the near future.

Our design uses a row and/or column of small speakers (called "arrays"), no more than an inch in diameter and drives each of them with a slightly different signal. By driving each one differently, we can control how the sound emerges from the array, and therefore how it sounds to the listener. The resulting surround sound image is large, wide, crisp and clear. It accurately reproduces the well-crafted sound effects that today's TV and movie studios create, so that the TV viewing experience is everything it should be.

We have designed an audio array system with the following characteristics:

Compact size to fit into a thin flat panel TV
Compatible with industrial designs with thin bezels and thin frames
Light weight with simple cavity enclosures
Customizable physical size
Customizable number of drivers
Customizable type of drivers - dynamic, ceramic or electrostatic or silicon
Customizable mounting of the array - vertical, horizontal or both
Excellent sound quality with surround sound formats 5.1 / 6.1 / 7.1 with the option to upgrade to more channels
Phase aligned Center and Bass
Bass boost with external sub woofer
Matched tone controls
Wide and large surround sound with ambiance
Largely insensitive to room geometry
Controllable surround sound mapping
Energy efficient - Fits into flat panel TV power budget
Good sound volume with low power dissipation
Cost-effective design
Plug-n-Play replacement for existing stereo system in the TV
Efficient interface to HDTV codecs and HDMI receivers
Compact, modular, integrated hardware, one-stop solution

Contact us for details. We have a talented hardware team capable of designing and delivering systems according to your needs. Here is a sample design: