Engineering Support for Flat Core Speaker Technology

Resonado, a South Bend, Indiana company founded at the University of Notre Dame, had a new take on electrodynamic speaker topology. The company developed a reconfigured speaker with a planar voice coil mounted perpendicularly to its flat “race track” diaphragm. Resonado calls it Flat Core Speaker (FCS) technology, and the ingenious architecture enables slightly thinner, lighter, and more efficient speakers than conventional equivalents. Applications are wide-ranging from soundbars, home theater, column speakers, automotive to headphone drivers.

The first Resonado FCS design is a high aspect ratio configuration which has a range of product packaging advantages. When oriented vertically, it yields wide line source horizontal coverage with reduced midrange ceiling and wall reflections.  For soundbars, the form factor enables a shallower and lower profile resulting in a more elegant design. With an aspect ratio typically of 4 to 1, more piston area results at lower cost than conventional round speakers of the same height.

While FCS technology has a somewhat different internal structure from conventional speakers’ workings, the material supply chain remains essentially unchanged. For that reason, Resonado has been able to source all of the components (spiders, voice coils, frames, diaphragms, etc), albeit with new tooling, from all the same vendors used for conventional speakers.

With consultancy from Menlo Scientific, Resonado is now entering mass-production of its first commercial speakers and has reached OEM agreements with two offshore factories for speakers and a headphone driver factory. Initial models include RV speakers, soundbar drivers, line array in-walls and headphone drivers. www.resonado.com