Portable electronic device having an external speaker chamber

Details Portable electronic device having an external speaker chamber Portable electronic device having an external speaker chamber

2001-01-23

2003-07-22

Barnie, Rexford (Department: 2643)

Electrical audio signal processing systems and devices

Having non-electrical feature

And loudspeaker

C381S388000, C381S306000, C381S340000

Reexamination Certificate

active

06597794

ABSTRACT:

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
This invention relates generally to portable electronic devices having one or more speakers for emitting audible sound. More particularly, the present invention relates to a portable electronic device having a speaker configuration that includes an external acoustic chamber.
Portable electronic devices have decreased both in size and weight over the past few years and are becoming ever more popular with travelers. This demand for smaller size with ever-increasing capability has required a tremendous effort to continually shrink many of the components contained within the device. For a notebook computer, examples of component shrinkage are the hard disk storage, the circuitry, tracking devices, Compact Disc drives, speakers, and even the connectors. The reduction in the size of many of these components has not been a serious problem, since technological advancements have allowed both improved capabilities along with smaller size. However, with the ever-increasing use of more sophisticated audio-visual multimedia applications, the reduction in the size of the speaker has caused more severe problems. As the speaker is reduced in size, the maximum power the speaker can handle is also reduced, resulting in both a reduction in loudness as well as a poorer overall quality of sound.
Portable electronic devices being designed today require the ability to operate with multi-media features and provide the user with the same enjoyable experience as that experienced from conventional high quality desktop systems. Thus, the sound emanating from a portable electronic device should provide as full a harmonic content as the original sound without increasing the device size. Thus, increasing the device size to accommodate larger speakers and larger speaker-box sizes is very undesirable since it would strongly detract from the very characteristics that have helped to make these devices popular, namely size and weight. Most audio equipment produces sound between 20 Hz to 20 kHz resulting in a full rich sound quality the average user has come to expect. On the other hand, most portable electronic devices have very limited capability in producing sound below 150 Hz. This limitation is the result of several competing factors. The production of low frequency sound requires the movement of a large mass of air to be heard. Thus the size of both the speaker and speaker enclosure are at odds with the small size of the typical case used in portable electronic devices. This is further limited by the human ear's weak response to low frequency sound thus requiring more power to create the equivalent loudness when compared to sound at 200 Hz and above. Thus, we are left with two serious problems: first is the ability to use a sufficient volume/mass of air to be heard; second is the ability to design speaker enclosures that allow use of more power to increase loudness, both without increasing the size of the case to any appreciable extent.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
A portable electronic device, such as a portable notebook computer, that includes a case made up of a top portion and a bottom portion with a base surface. The case contains a speaker having a front portion and a back portion, where the back chamber is formed in association with the back portion of the speaker. A first aperture is disposed through the bottom portion of the case, and an acoustic insulator is attached to the base surface of the case such that the acoustic insulator encircles the first aperture forming an external chamber. The external chamber is defined by the base surface, and the acoustic insulator being adapted to rest upon a support surface upon which the portable electronic device rests. The external chamber is coupled to the back chamber by the first aperture.


REFERENCES:
patent: 5610992 (1997-03-01), Hickman
patent: 5668882 (1997-09-01), Hickman et al.
patent: 5805708 (1998-09-01), Freadman
patent: 5847922 (1998-12-01), Smith et al.
patent: 5917695 (1999-06-01), Youn
patent: 6081421 (2000-06-01), Markow et al.

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