Drummer and Missy's Place

[DewDiligence]

Emo’s Ribbon Of Sound Licks Laptop Audio Woes

[Something to look forward to in 2010—maybe.]

http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2009/09/28/emos_ribbon_of_sound_licks_laptop_audio_woes/

›By Mark Baard
September 28, 2009

Waltham-based Emo Labs Inc. (www.emolabs.com/) says it has overcome the horrible sound that is a byproduct of having tiny cellphones and skinny laptops.

Organic and inorganic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs and ILEDs), as you’ve read here, will help bring super-sharp and rich images to smaller, even flexible, screens. But for years, engineers have made few breakthroughs in how they make speakers. Look inside your kid’s toys and your laptop computer, and you will see the same arrangement of coils and cones that you had in your stereo speakers in college.

But the ever-shrinking speakers that manufacturers are jamming into their devices might have you wondering why they bothered to put them in the first place.

Emo recently demonstrated at a trade show a prototype computer screen made with its “invisible’’ ultra-thin sound system. Called Edge Motion, it produces full stereo sound, while adding nothing to the thickness of the device.

Edge Motion replaces cone speakers with a thin, transparent membrane wrapped around the screen. The result, according to Emo: no more of that tinny sound from built-in laptop speakers, and no need to schlep separate speakers to the office or school, or to have them crowding your desk at home.

Emo says some computer screens will feature Edge Motion as early as 2010.‹