The 2 new technologies that will radically change loudspeakers

[SHB]

More than a few audio electronics designers have stated that the best electronics made today (best, not most expensive) are so good that there is no room left for any meaningful, audible improvement.

Obviously, this leaves only one area in the reproduction chain left to improve: loudspeakers. Active speakers substantially improve upon passive designs and DSP certainly adds more polish, but more needs to be done.

The speaker driver that still needs the most refinement is the woofer. It generates more distortion and temporal non-linearities than any other part of the system by several orders of magnitude.

There are two technologies on the horizon that will radically change loudspeakers forever and, ironically, the introduction will be incorporated into portable, powered speakers rather than studio monitors or high-end, hi-fi speakers.

Klippel Controlled Sound

New Design Opportunities Enabled by Klippel Controlled Sound

Klippel Controlled Sound (KCS) is a nonlinear, adaptive, feed-forward control technology that extends the usable working range of speakers and paves the way to lighter speaker designs that don't compromise on audio quality. By compensating for nonlinearities and preventing overload, KCS, powered...

audioxpress.com

This feed forward technology necessitates a closed system that is compromised of a controller, an amplifier and a speaker driver.

An active woofer system (amp/driver) is analyzed so its total performance up to its limits can be accurately modeled. With this information, you can then know what all of the distortions and nonlinearities are.

With that data, you can generate a signal that is all those distortions, but 180° out of phase. This will cancel out the distortion produced by the woofer by 20-30dB. It also allows the amp/driver system to perform up to their absolute limit without damage and drastically lowers distortion.

Brane Audio’s RAD2 driver

Brane Audio Unveils RAD2 Driver Tech at CES 2026, Teases Party Pro Prototype and a Deep Bass Reset

Brane Audio debuts RAD2 at CES 2026, previewing the Party Pro prototype and a radical new approach to deep bass that could reshape portable and wireless speakers.

www.ecoustics.com

The company’s CEO stated that this tech will do for speakers what plasma screens did for TVs. If the specs work out to be true, their RAD 2 speaker tech will be revolutionary.

Brane claims a 30x deep-bass advantage over conventional driver designs, while also reducing enclosure size and power consumption.

Their Party Pro powered, portable Bluetooth speaker has two RAD 2 sub drivers in a cabinet that’s roughly 1 cubic foot and is flat to 20Hz. Again, this is a battery powered party speaker. Price will be around $1,300.

When both of these technologies move into hi-fi and PA speakers, the changes they make will not be small.

 

[Hayabusa]

Especially the Klippel stuff is really a breakthrough , why don't they do it on 'hifi'/studio speakers (yet) I don't get .

 

[Audionaut]

No, neither is revolutionary; these systems merely shift where the price is paid, although I find KCS very promising for practical application.

 

[KSTR]

KCS is nice, and good to see it finally made it into the market after like 10+ years... but it really can't change the transducer. Shifting up the level of distortion-free performance comes at a cost, a much more abrupt change into gross distortion or heavy limiting. This constraint also applies to true MFB designs based on secondary sensors.

Bass performance simply scales with displaced air volume, there is no free lunch. Of course it is a good thing to a) have better linearity up to the physical driver limits (see above) and notably b) a better power efficiency. The RAD technology does help a lot wrt the second point.

 

[Keith_W]

The Brane negative magnetic spring was discussed here.

As for that Klippel, it should be very interesting. DSP requires that a system be linear time invariant (LTI) and loudspeakers are imperfect LTI devices. Notably, things like overexcursion, voice coil heating, etc. violate the principle of LTI. So I was interested to see from that article that the Klippel monitors voice coil temperature and cone excursion and dynamically adjusts for nonlinearities. Such an approach requires complete integration of the driver, amplifier, and control circuitry, so it is not surprising that the technology would debut in an integrated speaker. I suppose the next place we would see it would be in a studio monitor - if they got into that business themselves or licensed their technology to a third party.

 

[Head_Unit]

the technology would debut in an integrated speaker

Funny to think about, this rather implies that something like an Apple HomePod, Amazon Echo, Sonos and such could overtake the sound quality of "real" speakers. Not likely from Apple or Amazon, but maybe Sonos, Samsung, etc. Or Bluetooth makers. There's still a lot of scope to modernize speakers such as active designs, DSP response compensation and self-room-correction, oversized waveguided tweeters, and now these technologies. It takes some aggressive engineers and companies to bust out of the tried and true however.

 

[mhardy6647]

Time will tell.

 

[Hayabusa]

No, neither is revolutionary; these systems merely shift where the price is paid, although I find KCS very promising for practical application.

So klippel is not the first with this?

 

[sonitus mirus]

Personally, I am skeptical of the whole “this changes everything” angle. KCS sounds interesting, and probably useful, especially for active integrated speakers, but I have a hard time imagining it producing changes that matter more than the room itself, placement, or just the overall speaker design. Brane is interesting on paper too, but I would still want to see a lot of independent measurements before getting too excited.

 

[tineared]

So klippel is not the first with this?

For all intents and purposes, noise-canceling headphones have been doing similar sound adjusting for years
They're just extending the technology to full-size speakers and designating driver distortion as the noise to eliminate.

 

[KL....]

The Brane negative magnetic spring was discussed here.

As for that Klippel, it should be very interesting. DSP requires that a system be linear time invariant (LTI) and loudspeakers are imperfect LTI devices. Notably, things like overexcursion, voice coil heating, etc. violate the principle of LTI. So I was interested to see from that article that the Klippel monitors voice coil temperature and cone excursion and dynamically adjusts for nonlinearities. Such an approach requires complete integration of the driver, amplifier, and control circuitry, so it is not surprising that the technology would debut in an integrated speaker. I suppose the next place we would see it would be in a studio monitor - if they got into that business themselves or licensed their technology to a third party.

Thank you, @Keith_W, Yes, quite Fabulous all that is comeing, isn't it? Is it reasonable to suggest that all this began with the Bose 901 speakers?

 

[Keith_W]

Is it reasonable to suggest that all this began with the Bose 901 speakers?

?????????

Apart from "NO!" I don't know what else to say?

 

[Hayabusa]

For all intents and purposes, noise-canceling headphones have been doing similar sound adjusting for years
They're just extending the technology to full-size speakers and designating driver distortion as the noise to eliminate.

Removing the distortion caused by non linearty is kind of far from doing acoustic noise cancelation. Different ballpark

 

[KL....]

?????????

Apart from "NO!" I don't know what else to say?

Thank you, although....

• The Bose 901 speaker system, introduced in 1968, was one of the first and most prominent consumer loudspeaker systems to utilize an active equalizer (often referred to as an "Active Equalizer Module" or "Active Equalizer Box") to achieve its intended sound. The term "parametric EQ" specifically refers to EQs with adjustable Q, frequency, and gain, the Bose 901 active equalizer was a specialized, pre-set active EQ designed to correct the frequency response of the 9 full-range drivers.

 

[tineared]

Removing the distortion caused by non linearty is kind of far from doing acoustic noise cancelation. Different ballpark

What's different about them?

 

[Audionaut]

So klippel is not the first with this?

That depends.

No, it's not new, because Klippel isn't the first to actively "control" loudspeakers. The basic idea of monitoring the movement of the diaphragm and correcting deviations has been around since the 1960s and 1970s. Particularly well-known are the Motional Feedback Systems (MFB) from Philips and the sensor-based controls from Backes & Müller. Both approaches work with a real mechanical sensor on the loudspeaker – usually an accelerometer or other motion sensor – that measures how the diaphragm actually moves. This signal is then compared with the input signal and corrected via a closed control loop. So if the diaphragm deviates from the desired movement pattern due to motor nonlinearities, the suspension, or the influence of the enclosure, the electronics intervene and counteract this. The goal is to track the diaphragm movement as precisely as possible, thereby significantly reducing distortion and improving control of the low-frequency range.

Yes, it is new, because while Philips and Backes & Müller use real sensors, Klippel attempts to calculate the membrane movement from a physical model of the loudspeaker. The system simply measures electrical variables such as voltage and current at the voice coil and combines these with detailed parameter models of the driver. This data is used to estimate in real time how the diaphragm is currently moving, and the drive signal is corrected accordingly. You could say that instead of measuring the movement directly, it is calculated virtually.

The real innovation lies not so much in the idea behind the control system itself—which has been around for a long time at Philips and Backes & Müller, for example—but in the way it is implemented. Klippel replaces the physical sensor with a mathematical model and uses the DSP computing power available today to apply this model in real time. This allows similar corrections to be made even with standard speaker chassis, without the need to integrate a special sensor into the driver. This is particularly interesting for series products because it reduces mechanical complexity.

Klippel uses a virtual "this is how this driver should behave in this situation" based on data measured in advance from a driver prototype and feeds this data into the correction program of the purely electronic circuit without mechanical sensors.

I find this approach highly interesting, even for very high-quality loudspeakers and not just for small Bluetooth devices.

 

[Keith_W]

Thank you, although....

• The Bose 901 speaker system, introduced in 1968, was one of the first and most prominent consumer loudspeaker systems to utilize an active equalizer (often referred to as an "Active Equalizer Module" or "Active Equalizer Box") to achieve its intended sound. The term "parametric EQ" specifically refers to EQs with adjustable Q, frequency, and gain, the Bose 901 active equalizer was a specialized, pre-set active EQ designed to correct the frequency response of the 9 full-range drivers.

A PEQ is very different to what is being discussed here. Please follow that link and take a look at what KCS is doing.

 

[Arindal]

ironically, the introduction will be incorporated into portable, powered speakers rather than studio monitors or high-end, hi-fi speakers.

It is not as surprising, as these speakers usually sell mainly on a proposition to deliver max SPL and lower bass out of a very very compact enclosure. Even without such technology, one can buy a portable speaker today, delivering bass extension down to 36Hz or max SPL of 92dB (not at the same time), out of 0.9l (!!) of enclosure volume per bass driver.

High End and studio speakers leave much more room for headroom in terms of power, volume and diaphragm area, so they are rarely driven to the very limits on a constant base.

An active woofer system (amp/driver) is analyzed so its total performance up to its limits can be accurately modeled. With this information, you can then know what all of the distortions and nonlinearities are.

Klippel uses a virtual "this is how this driver should behave in this situation" based on data measured in advance from a driver prototype and feeds this data into the correction program of the purely electronic circuit without mechanical sensors.

I wonder how well this works with extreme Xmax passive radiators, or vented systems of very limited enclosure volume (I would say these are technologies used by the vast majority of compact portable speakers). Something tells me it is quite difficult to model all kinds of nonlinearities occurring with real-world signals like music in such a chain of variables.

With that data, you can generate a signal that is all those distortions, but 180° out of phase. This will cancel out the distortion produced by the woofer by 20-30dB. It also allows the amp/driver system to perform up to their absolute limit without damage and drastically lowers distortion.

It does not sound to me like a system getting the maximum of lower bass extension and SPL out of a limited amount of power. In contrary, I would assume it eats up power and excursion reserves to cancel out distortion which occurs due to excessive excursion. It remains a mystery how this should work with passive radiators or ports in case they produce distortion (or compression).

 

[somebodyelse]

The mechanical and thermal protection part of Klippel's offering sounds much like what TI have been calling SmartPA for a few years now. SLAA952 provides a worked example of their characterisation process.

 

[SHB]

One more wrinkle with Klippel Controlled Sound from a Youtube video: the Klippel rep stated that driver aging and other variables can be accounted for with the system.

With a feedback system like a servo sensor, accounting for any nonlinearities is part of the correction loop.

In a feedforward system, this doesn’t seem to be something you can model with a great deal of accuracy. My guess is that there must be some element of the controller that is analyzing back EMF the amplifier is receiving from the driver.