Transducer technology

Omnipanel speakers use piezoelectric drive elements, or 'exciters' in place of the electromagnetic coils of conventional piston-type speaker drivers. Piezoelectric crystals are smart, shape-changing materials. Applying a voltage across them alters their length, allowing them to be used as actuators.

Piezoelectric exciter

Omnipanel speakers use multiple exciters to propagate sound in a way that breaks many of the rules of conventional cone speakers. Quite apart from the installation convenience of hanging the slim omnipanel as you would a picture almost anywhere in the classroom, the acoustic performance of these speakers makes them the ideal solution for classroom soundfield systems.

Omnidirectional dispersion

Sound from an omnipanel speaker is dispersed in a spherical pattern across most of the frequencies it reproduces. The positioning of the speaker is therefore not a critical issue as it is with conventional cone speakers.

conventional speaker

omnipanel speaker

There is no need to angle omnipanel speakers to a specific direction, speaker height is of little importance, and they can be placed in any orientation or plane. This makes it easy to choose a location to hang omnipanel speakers in classrooms or portables where there is little free space available for speaker installation.

Sustained sound pressure level over distance

Sound pressure level (SPL) from a conventional cone loudspeaker falls off dramatically as the listener moves away from the speaker, following the 'inverse square law'. In contrast, the SPL fall off from an omnipanel speaker is much less marked over distance. In fact, with larger omnipanel surfaces it is possible to move away from the panel without showing an appreciable loss of SPL. This feature makes it possible to achieve a very uniform soundfield with omnipanel speakers.

Radiated sound energy is diffuse and highly disperse

Conventional cone loudspeakers radiate sound energy that is fundamentally phase related. This means that reflections from walls, floor and other boundaries are highly correlated with the energy from the original source. When cone speakers are placed in a typical classroom, additions and cancellations occur which can create problems with room response and reverberation, resulting in poor intelligibility and impaired soundfield performance.

conventional speaker

omnipanel speaker

The radiated sound from omnipanel speakers is essentially random in nature, significantly less phase-related, and any reflections from classroom boundaries are much less correlated. Feedback, reverberation and room response effects are reduced and speech intelligibility is greatly improved.

For further information please see these research articles.