We've long since wondered how
laptop manufacturers got away with
claiming that a bonafide "
subwoofer" was somehow crammed within those tight confines, but if
Panasonic has anything to do with it, true low-range may soon fit within such an enclosure. The patent-pending Nano Bass Exciter reportedly enables compact equipment to "reproduce high fidelity low-range sounds," and while specifics have yet to be divulged, this technology can supposedly "reproduce low-end sound equivalent to that emitted by conventional speakers with larger cabinet volume." Furthermore, Panny even goes so far as to claim that this new sound reproduction method allows "ultra-compact
speakers used for mobile terminals to produce a sound effect closer to that of home AV equipment speakers." Unfortunately, there's no word on exactly when the firm plans on implementing this into any future products, but until we get a listen in, color us cautiously skeptical.
[Via
Japan Today]
posted Jul 31st 2007 9:03AM
To truly reproduce low frequencies at any kind of volume the device needs to move a lot of air. Some companies (bose) have played tricks with waveguide and other mechanisms to produce "pseudo-bass" in the rather muddy 100-250 hz range. I doubt that this is exactly going to thump like a good 12" or 15" woofer down to 30 hz or lower...You can not violate the laws of physics.
My guess is that they are doing some sort of harmonic trickery.
While air (or any medium) would indeed have to move for a sonic effect, it doesn't actually move longitudinally as much as people may think. Sound is basically just standing waves, so you could conceivably invent a nano-something that moved the air more like a guitar string does and less like a large speaker. Pretty much what you concluded, but still not exactly trickery.
Sound is a longitudinal pressure wave traveling in the same direction of the vibration. How exactly is it a standing wave?
And if you are thinking of reflections on the surfaces of the listening environment, speaker performance is measured in anechoic chambers so that consideration is irrelevant anyway.
This is panasonic not Steorn, if they are making this claim you can be sure the final product will be at least 20% of what they are claiming after marketing bloat speak.
We'll see.
There are already compact equipment capable of emitting low frequency sounds on the market. They are called headphones.
These claims are easy to make if you only tell half the story. Compact equipment is incapable of moving the volume of air required to produce low frequency sounds at any reasonable dynamic range for a loudspeaker. But if you don't specify the dynamic range of the speaker you can easily stretch your claim of the frequency response of that speaker.
This is just like those unscrupulous amplifier manufacturers who claim their amps are capable of producing 100W while stating in small print that at that kind of power the amp is approaching 10% total harmonic distortion.
What you folks seem to be forgetting is that moving "lots of air" is required only when you need "lots of volume." Amplitude, not frequency, determines volume of air moved. Which, on a laptop, you _don't_. This is why headphones work fine for low-end bass, provided it's close to your ear. To get reasonable bass in an open-air laptop environment, you simply need to move *more* air than a pair of headphones, but I strongly doubt you need to move nearly as much air as you would with a loudspeaker. They're called _loud_speakers for a reason.
Not true. More air needs to be displaced to produce a low frequency sound at the same volume as a higher frequency sound. Amplitude and frequency both determine the amount of air that needs to be moved.
That aside, you are basically saying what I said about the fact that the frequency response of compact speakers can be exaggerated at will as long as the amplitude range of the response can kept loose. The problem is that even laptop speakers need to move tremendous amount of air to produce low frequency sounds since they are after all, not headphones.
Still, you can simply attenuate the higher frequencies to flatten the frequency response, _if_ you can move just enough air to be happy with your LF response.
However, my question (and I'm not an audio specialist, so maybe it's a dumb one) is:
Why can't you use, say, a large electrostatic speaker mounted either behind the screen or probably under the base of the laptop? You can get a speaker that way _much_ larger than existing ones. Sure you only get one, and add substantial thickness (but not much weight), but we are talking a "subwoofer" here, so keep the normal speakers for mid/high freqs and stereo separation.
Reading the press release, I realize that this "technology" is just as unimpressive as I imagined. It is essentially just a new type of damping material to be used in small speaker cabinets. Panasonic claims that this new damping material decreases the pressure in the cabinet more than previous materials and thus allows more movement of the cones. This "technology" does nothing to address the fundamental limitations of small speaker cones, that they do not have the size or power necessary to displace the amount of air needed to faithfully reproduce low frequency sounds at audible volumes. Not only that, but even calling this an innovation is a stretch, since damping material have been used in speaker cabinets since long ago. Not to mention for small speaker cabinets, more desirable methods for reducing internal reflections can be used, such as bass reflex.
Hooray Chir, thank god someone in this thread knows what they're talking about.
Even if Panasonic found a way to increase the cone excursion with small drivers, and although this would move slightly more air (but still not enough to really qualify as a "subwoofer"), the power consumption of such a device required to drive the voice coil would be far too great for mobile devices.