GoldenEar Officials Awarded Patent for Subwoofer Technology

GoldenEar Technology’s head of engineering, Robert Johnston, and President Sandy Gross were granted U.S. patent 9,462,391 from the U.S Patent and Trademark Office for a “vertically and horizontally balanced subwoofer,” dubbed Dual-Plane Inertially Balanced Technology, Gross told us at the HTSA conference in Chicago this week. The patented technology is built into GoldenEar's SuperSub X ($1,249) subwoofer that’s due to ship in two weeks and the SuperSub XXL ($1,999) that’s been out for a year. The patented technology enabled GoldenEar to improve the performance of subwoofers while also making them smaller, said Gross. Compact subwoofers, typically, “if they have impact, make one note and are not overly musical,” he said. “Or if they’re musical, they don’t have impact.” Gross and Johnston came up with a way to mount two passive radiators and two active drivers on the top and bottom of the subwoofer cabinet, resulting in driver-to-room coupling that distributes sound smoothly, while minimizing unwanted vibration, Gross said. The SuperSub X measures a cubic foot.