Patent · US Expired

Method and system which drives left, right, and subwoofer transducers with multichannel amplifier having reduced power supply requirements

US6181796A · kind A · utility

23Cited by
10References
23Claims
0Family size

Assignee

Inventor

Key dates

Filing dateMay 26, 1998
Grant dateJan 30, 2001
Priority date
Expiry dateMay 26, 2018

Classification

  • Technology area (CPC H)Electricity
  • CPC primaryH04R3/00
  • WIPO fieldAudio-visual technology
  • WIPO sectorElectrical engineering

Abstract

A system and method which generates amplified signals indicative of left and right stereo channels, and uses the signals to drive transducers for each of subwoofer, left stereo, and right stereo channels. The amplification circuitry is operable with a power supply having low peak current capability (i.e., low peak to average current rating) even when amplifying an input signal pair having highly correlated frequency components, since it spreads the peak current demands imposed on the power supply over a full cycle of each of the highly correlated frequency components. A series-connected pair of left and right channel transducers is driven by left and right channel power amplifiers of the amplification circuitry, and the subwoofer channel transducer is connected in parallel with this transducer pair so that all three transducers are driven by two power amplifiers, thus eliminating the need for a third power amplifier to drive the subwoofer channel transducer. Preferably, the system of the invention includes high pass and low pass filters which direct appropriate subsets of the frequency components of each output signals of the amplification circuitry outputs to an appropriate subset…

Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.