NXT’s flatpanel speaker

Steve Harris seems to be on the legacy of NXT’s flatpanel speaker, which as soon as promised to revolutionise audio replay. Did you realise the know-how is now extra broadly accessible than ever earlier than?

You enter the restaurant, you’re ushered to a desk that appears good, you sit down… after which, ‘Oh, no!’. You realise that there’s a very nasty-sounding loudspeaker proper above your head. It’s pumping out background music that’s meant to cowl the entire place, however you occur to be within the nearfield, and it’s terrible.

Well, this wouldn’t be such a standard expertise if the flatpanel audio system pioneered by NXT had achieved world domination, and displaced all these cheaply-installed Chinese cones.

Screen and heard

For these not sufficiently old to recollect, NXT’s Distributed Mode Loudspeaker was one of many nice audio sensations of the late Nineteen Nineties. A DML is nearly the alternative of a standard speaker. In the latter, drive models transfer air whereas the cupboard panels that assist them are speculated to be ‘useless’. In a DML, an exciter connected to a panel induces ‘bending wave’ vibration modes within the panel, which then freely radiates sound.

The thought had sprung unexpectedly from analysis executed by Dr Ken Heron at DERA, the British Defence Evaluation and Research Agency, on noise cancellation in plane cockpits, when it was discovered that light-weight composite panels might behave as loudspeakers. A patent was filed in 1991.

Five years later, on September 27 1996, Verity Group demonstrated its NXT flat audio system to its shareholders and to the press. Those current have been impressed by a house cinema system through which the display screen itself was the centre speaker.

Verity was headed by Farad Azima, who had based Mission Electronics in 1977. By 1996 the group additionally embraced Wharfedale, Quad and Roksan. Having taken a licence on the DERA patent, Verity introduced the idea to fruition with a computer-based growth programme headed by Farad’s brother Henry Azima, who had been accountable for Mission speaker design since 1979. New Transducers Ltd, referred to as NXT, was created as a subsidiary firm.

Now NXT started promoting licences for the know-how whereas finishing its net of worldwide patent safety. In late 1997 Verity Group relinquished all of its hi-fi manufacturers, besides Cyrus, and in impact morphed into NXT.

One milestone on this growth section was a double licensing settlement with Harman International, signed in early 1998. This gave Harman the unique proper to sublicense NXT’s know-how to corporations within the USA, in addition to a worldwide licence to fabricate and promote merchandise that have been based mostly on NXT know-how.

Cambridge Audio Aeromax audio system from the 2010s with BMR drivers and [top] DML-500 speaker from 2019 by Tectonic Audio Labs, NXT successor and licensor of the know-how

By 2000, NXT had signed up greater than 170 licensees, and NXT’s shares boomed. NXT went on to nurture the BMR or Balanced Mode Radiator, claimed to mix the attributes of standard pistonic drive models with these of a DML. In 2010, NXT was reconstituted as HiWave Audio, which grew to become Tectonic Audio Labs when acquired by US firm FLAT Audio Technologies in 2013. Today Tectonic provides BMR drive models and DML exciters, and full techniques for industrial functions.

Somehow, NXT by no means fairly set the hi-fi world alight, but it surely supplied nice options for a lot of functions. A DML panel can provide low distortion and vast dispersion throughout the entire frequency vary, for a sound that’s each constant and comfy throughout a big listening space.

Making waves

Today, DML, each the know-how and the terminology, is extra broadly supplied than ever earlier than. At the acute excessive finish, the German hi-fi firm Göbel has audio system based mostly by itself quite completely different patented bending-wave know-how, utilizing a fancy nine-layer membrane.

At the opposite excessive, DIY-ers can simply experiment with exciters from Dayton Audio within the US, or from Far East suppliers and their very own selection of panel materials. As Dayton places it, ’Surface exciter know-how supplies a common, cost-effective various to loudspeakers, permitting for sound replica nearly anyplace it’s desired’. One day it’d come to a restaurant close to you.

HI-FI News

by way of Hi-Fi News https://ift.tt/uyRdYEh

April 16, 2025 at 02:28PM