Vizio Patent Describes Speakers That Self-Adjust for ‘Up-Firing’ Content

Vizio landed U.S. patent 11,095,976 Tuesday for an audio system that enables the orientation of a “second subset” of speakers to be made “automatically adjustable relative to the orientation of a first subset.” When the system detects incoming audio signals with “up-firing content,” it adjusts “the relative orientations when such content is provided,” said the patent, based on a January 2020 application. The system also is configured “to calculate a desired degree of rotation for the speakers in the second subset based on the geometry of the room in which the sound system is located and the location of the listener in the room,” it said. Some Dolby Atmos channels may be up-firing, “depending on the desires of the specific content creator,” it said. “One scenario in which up-firing content would be used is one in which the listener would expect sounds to emanate from overhead,” such as airplane noise, it said. “This requires rotating the up-firing speakers by an angle of rotation that ensures that the emitted sound will reflect off of the ceiling and travel to the listener's ears.” But in larger rooms or those with high ceilings, “the position of the listener relative to the sound system may vary, causing the optimum angle of rotation to vary as well,” said the patent. “It is desirable to provide a speaker system in which the relative orientations of the speaker drivers comprising the system are automatically adjustable, in particular, to a user selected angle of rotation between the up-firing and forward-firing speakers or based on the position of the listener relative to the sound system and/or the room geometry.” Vizio didn’t comment on commercial deployment plans for the invention.