News

We received a e-mail recently from long-time reader Sharon Churchill, which linked to an article in the New Scientist Invention blog concerning a recent Sony patent application for a system that will automatically recalibrate its response to put the sweet spot where the listener is, wherever that might be.

"Pretty cool stuff," but, as Churchill pointed out, there was no mention of it on Stereophile's website, which made the news seem a trifle untrustworthy. Have no fear, we're on the job.

The patent specifies that the "multichannel stereophony sound system" has a "relative location determination mechanism for determining the relative positions of at least all sound emitting components of the audio system with respect to each other, a personal device detector for detecting a personal device belonging to a user, a personal device position tracking mechanism for tracking the position of the personal device, and a re-calibration mechanism for re-calibrating the sound field such that the sweet spot of the sound field is placed at the current position of the personal device."

In other words, the speakers have positioning elements and the listener has a positioning element and the DSP will re-calibrate the system's focus every time any of them changes locations. The patent application also states that room acoustics and propagation will figure in the calibrations.

Fine for single audiophiles, we hear you thinking, but what about multiple listener situations? Sony has that covered, too. "To solve the problem of a multi-listener audience and/or of several personal devices detected for one user, the audio system further advantageously comprises an arbitration means for arbitrating between different requirements set by more than one personal device being detected by the personal device detection means according to a set of criteria. One of the preferred criteria is hereby to position the sweet spot for covering a maximum number personal device positions as tracked by the personal device position tracking means. Another one of the preferred criteria is to position the sweet spot to a position of a preferred personal device as tracked by the personal device position tracking means."

In the patent application's final paragraphs, however, lies a clue concerning the real perfect app for this dynamic adaptive system: "It is to be noted that the technology underlying the present invention can be transferred to other tracking systems like an automatic angular alignment of a TV-screen or a monitor like eg a LCD-display. Particularly LCD-Displays used as TV or Computer monitors have a very narrow angle of optimum vision. In case that a user moves outside of the area defined by the angle of optimum vision, the image quality decreases significantly. By identifying and tracking a user of the display according to the present invention, the LCD-display can adapt its orientation automatically with a re-calibration means specialized for the LCD-display."

'Fess up, you were getting pretty excited there for a while, weren't you? We were.

Actually, sweet spot adaptive steering is not that new a dream: toward the end of his May 2000 interview with John Atkinson, Paul McGowan of PS Audio suggested that it was the next big thing. Perhaps Sony will prove him right yet.