Hi Gilbo,
Thanks for the link, have had a very quick browse through, will have a closer look later on.
FIrst thoughts are that these speakers may be suitable for low power applications, both low power consumption and low output power, but I really don't know about the latter, this is important however, as if they are not powerful enough for home hifi or commercial speakers in the entertainment space, this limits the market to small devices and maybe TV's. I could not find reference to power output capabilities per chip in the presentations but they may be in there, will go through them.
They do detail theoretical sensitivities and frequency responses that various sized arrays can produce, and they are impressive, but this is no good for higher power applications unless you can marry these with high output power and dynamic range.
I know these presentations are from a while back so possibly they have achieved better results.
If the speakers were limited to small devices, that's great, there's billions of thes produced every year, phones, tablets, flat TV's etc, but I would then be wanting to have a serious look at any difference in price, that might tempt the manufacturers to use the digital speakers. I imagine that traditional diaphraghm speakers, being used in smartphones etc, may be very cheaply produced now.
In the presentation they talk about only 1/4 chip being needed to replicate a smartphone speaker frequency response, They mentioned being 1000hz to 12-15000hz. What they didn't confirm or bring up, was if this 1/4 chip could actually match or exceed the sound pressure level or audio output power of the traditional device.
Even with 64 chips, the lower frequency sensitivity was not as good as traditional hifi speakers, this could be sorted with digital equalising, but leads me to believe the power output at lower frequencies may be not that crash hot. i.e. you may need a huge and possibly expensive array to achieve what an off the shelf HIFI speaker can achieve.
All of that said, I suspect they could be on to something very promising with this technology and I really do not have any idea what the current state of development is. I sent these questions to Audiopixels today, so will see what they come back with, if they respond at all.
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