Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corporation

Garth Norman Showalter

Mario Di Cola

John Michael Gott

Patrick Ross Spurlock

Gregory Lynn Carney

Bryce Joseph Gott

Michael John Smithers

James J Croft, Iii

Joel A Butler

Brian Ruff

Embodiments are described for a high-frequency waveguide that improves the performance of large-scale surround sound and immersive audio environments. A horn waveguide is configured to be asymmetric about one of a vertical axis and horizontal axis of the waveguide to form an asymmetric horn waveguide. A spherical enclosure surrounds the asymmetric horn waveguide to form a horn speaker, and a three-axis mounting system is configured to fix the horn speaker to one of a wall or ceiling surface of the venue, wherein the mounting system facilitates rotating the horn speaker to a location that provides maximum coverage of the venue within the passband of the asymmetric horn waveguide.

Asymmetrical high-frequency waveguide, 3-axis rigging, and spherical enclosure for surround speakers

A dual wave-column, dual-driver loudspeaker enclosure is described. The two drivers are cross-coupled through their respective front and back sides by two single exit wave-columns. At the &#xbc; wavelength frequency of the waveguide length, both drivers resonate with the waveguides, and cone motion is minimized while output is maximized. At the &#xbd; wavelength frequency, the front wave of the first driver is in-phase with, the rear wave of the second driver such that the output is increased, reinforced, and smoothed at that frequency. At the &#x2153; wavelength frequency, the two wave-column mouth outputs exhibit acoustic mutual coupling, which boosts acoustic output and reduces cone motion at the critical maximum displacement frequency.

Multi-driver loudspeaker with cross-coupled dual wave-columns

An acoustic manifold for altering a sound wavefront shape from a loudspeaker having a substantially planar driver, comprising a mounting surface configured to attach to a front surface of a case surrounding the driver and having two vertical openings matching corresponding vertical openings in the case to allow sound from the driver to project therethrough, and a waveguide portion coupled to the mounting surface and having a structure channeling sound projected from the driver through the two vertical openings to be combined in one output area. The structure has a plurality of reflective surfaces configured to create output sound that has a consistent dispersion pattern over a defined area. The manifold is configured to increase a vertical and/or horizontal beamwidth of the projected sound so that listeners positioned off an axis of the loudspeaker will hear a wide range of audible frequencies at a substantially similar sound level.

Planar loudspeaker manifold for improved sound dispersion

Embodiments are described for a hybrid amplification architecture that separates individual audio amplifier stages from the power supply and a simple two- or three-conductor bus that transmits both power and audio signal to a plurality of daisy-chained speakers to playback adaptive audio content in an expanded surround-sound environment including surround and overhead speakers or for use within professional live sound applications and/or distributed audio systems. A control unit generates digital audio and power and transmits both simultaneously over the bus to individual speaker units associated with each speaker. The speaker units recover the power decode the channel assignment to route the audio to the appropriate speakers.

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Ozark, MO, United States of America

Garth Norman Showalter