Piezo Transducers Could Turn Displays Into Speakers

February 13, 2024 by Maya Posch 28 Comments

Will piezoelectric-based speakers replace traditional speakers over the coming years in space-constrained devices? We have definitely seen the use of piezo transducers in e.g. high-end televisions that use the display’s surface not just for the visual content, but also as a highly dynamic speaker. If you extrapolate this principle to something like smartphones, tablets and laptops the advantages are clear: piezoelectric transducers are smaller, more power efficient and do not need any holes in the enclosure. These and other advantages are what [Vineet Ganju] argues in IEEE Spectrum will push the market to adopt this new technology.

When piezoelectric transducers vibrate the display itself to create sound waves, the sound seems to come directly from the image on the screen, a much more realistic effect. (Credit: James Provost) — Piezoelectric transducers vibrate the display itself to create sound waves. (Credit: James Provost)

[Vineet] is the Vice President and General Manager of the audio business unit of Synaptics — which is one of the companies pushing for these piezoelectric transducers to be used for speaker purposes — so there is definitely some bias involved. Even so, it’s undeniable that the speakers in portable devices as well as the average flat panel TV aren’t exactly amazing, with the limited space meaning that audio quality suffers, with lows being generally absent and the resulting audio sounding ‘tinny’. Generally this is where people get external speakers for their TV, and lug portable speakers along with their laptop and other mobile devices.

For TVs, Sony has pushed for its Acoustic Surface Audio technology that uses two or three piezoelectric transducers on their OLED panels, while Samsung sticks to traditional speakers, but places lots of them around the screen with its Object Tracking Sound technology.

Sony’s technology cannot be used with LCD panels, due to the backlight being in the way, so the interesting question here is whether the piezoelectric speaker revolution proposed by [Vineet] will be limited to devices that use OLED or similar backlight-less displays?

Stepping Inside Art In VR, And The Workflow Behind It

February 13, 2024 by Donald Papp 13 Comments

The process of creating something is always chock-full of things to learn, so it’s always a treat when someone takes the time and effort to share it. [Teadrinker] recently published the technique and workflow behind bringing art into VR, which explains exactly how they created a virtual reality art gallery that allows one to step inside paintings, called Art Plunge (free on Steam.)

Extending a painting’s content to fill in the environment is best done by using other works by the same artist.

It walks through not just how to obtain high-resolution images of paintings, but also discusses how to address things like adjusting the dynamic range and color grading to better match the intended VR experience. There is little that is objectively correct in technical terms when it comes to the aesthetic presentation details like brightness and lighting, so guidance on what does and doesn’t work well and how to tailor to the VR experience is useful information.

One thing that is also intriguing is the attention paid to creating a sense of awe for viewers. The quality, the presentation, and even choosing sounds are all important for creating something that not only creates a sense of awe, but does so in a way that preserves and cultivates a relationship between the art and the viewer that strives to stay true to the original. Giving a viewer a sense of presence, after all, can be more than just presenting stereoscopic 3D images or fancy lightfields.

You can get a brief overview of the process in a video below, but if you have the time, we really do recommend reading the whole breakdown.

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