Sony Acoustic Surface - has anyone ever thoroughly tested this as a speaker?

[dlaloum]

So we are seeing BIG screens becoming available at affordable mainstream pricing... 115" being shown at CES 2024

With the arrival of such large direct view screens into the mainstream market, projection based systems are under substantial pressure, and in many use cases, are becoming redundant, as the direct view screens provide higher maximum brightness, and oft superior contrast, black levels etc... not to mention useablity in lit environments...

But once you move to a large direct view - where does the center channel go... underneath or above, with such a large screen, really is not optimal - on a projector/screen setup, the acoustically transparent screens are the main solution.. the sound is then properly centered on the screen.

The only solution out there at present seems to be Sony's "Acoustic Surface".

Some people swear by it, and there have been numerous review, but I don't believe I have see a proper technical analysis of the Acoustic Surface tech as a "speaker"

Has anyone seen a spinorama of the sony acoustic surface? In depth analysis of its audio performance including dispersion pattern, etc?

A MiniLED Acoustic Surface TV/Monitor, could be the solution for many of us, if the speaker performance is up to it...

 

[kemmler3D]

IIRC there was the same tech on display back in 2015, I saw a screen-as-transducer from another company. As I recall it sounded decent, but on the show floor a serious evaluation isn't really possible. What I can tell you is it seemed to have pretty large xmax (they hung little spheres resting on the front of the screen which bounced around when a low note hit) and obviously the radiating area is decent.

If they are able to make a proper DML out of a TV screen, I don't see why it shouldn't sound pretty good. A TV in 2023 2024 has more than enough CPU for all the DSP you'd need to make it sound good in that role.

 

[dlaloum]

As an aside, Sony are moving more towards MiniLED - all the acoustic surface models seem to have been OLED - and integration with the more complex layers of a MiniLED may make acoustic surface more difficult or impossible...