You may not have heard of Brane Audio yet, but believe me. One of my highlights from his CES in Las Vegas today was hearing the company’s debut speaker, his Brane X, alongside other well-known speaker brands. The company’s founders have a background in precision magnetics, and after leaving their previous company decided to apply this expertise to another area where magnets are important: speakers.
The company’s first product is the $600 Brane X, which will be available for pre-order soon. A big innovation is the company’s Repel-Attract Driver (RAD). A combination of moving and fixed magnets is used to create forces equal and opposite to those caused by large changes in air pressure within the speaker enclosure. The result is the ability to move a lot of air (and thus punch a lot of bass) in a tiny package that the company claims consumes 10% of the power that a conventional subwoofer consumes. .
“We have developed a new way of making audio, specifically a novel subwoofer that uses a technology called ‘Repel Attract Driver’ or RAD. It uses magnetic force to offset the inherent air pressure force when creating the low notes of the subwoofer. There’s even a law (Hoffman’s Law) that says you can’t get deep bass with an efficient speaker using conventional technology. When Keep it compact. The smaller the subwoofer, the higher and higher the air pressure is, allowing you to extract more power,” explains Joe Pinkerton, co-founder and CEO of Brane Audio, in his TechCrunch interview. “to The pressure is canceled by magnetic force, and it stays in the container. It means all it takes to overcome its own inertia. At subwoofer range it is about 100 times more efficient. This allows for 10 times less size and 10 times less power. “
Brane Audio showed off the speaker alongside the Sonos Move, blowing it out of the water. Image Credit: TechCrunch / Haje Kamps
Dear reader, you have already done the math. Smaller, lighter and consuming less power are the same interesting technologies for portable speakers. And that’s exactly what the company built with his Brane X. It includes an 8-inch subwoofer in a portable speaker that can run for 12 hours on battery power. It also has all the other features you would expect from a high-end portable speaker. It has Alexa, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and can run Spotify. Along with the aforementioned bass pumper, a pair of tweeters and a pair of midrange speakers are included, so they retain the power to reproduce stereo sound.The speakers are IP 5x rated. That means it’s more rainproof than a BBQ or pool party.
In the suite where the tech was demoed, I noticed behind the couch to see if the company was hiding additional speakers. The strangely immersive soundscape that came out was a decidedly magical experience.. I couldn’t find any other speakers, but the team said yes it all really came from their little box. Assured me.
Brane Audio’s subwoofers use FPGAs to balance magnets exactly where they are needed. image credit: TechCrunch / Haje Kamps
Pinkerton founded Active Power, an energy company that created a giant 15,000-pound magnetic-bearing flywheel for power storage in the early 1990s. The precision required to use a combination of static and dynamic magnets to keep these flywheels precisely balanced using axial magnetic bearings develops a very precise feedback his loop I meant that. Shortly after taking the company public in 2000, he started a clean energy lab and started looking for other opportunities. One of the techniques he looked at for the company was using graphene to create more efficient switches.
“AhIt was switching 5,000 times per second. We were like, ‘Wow, it makes a lot of sound for its size,’ but it was just a chip-level device,” laughs Pinkerton. He wondered what would happen. Purpose“We straddled Clean Energy Labs to Brane Audio in 2015 and said, ‘Okay, let’s make this membrane-based speaker.’ We were going to launch, and then COVID hit and the factory shut down.”
From there it went back to the drawing board, but Pinkerton wasn’t ready to let the tech rest just yet.
“Our experience is something the average audio engineer didn’t even know existed. I will explain.
The speaker is big for a portable speaker. It’s more like a small boombox than a speaker that you just throw in your hand luggage for international travel. It seems like a good speaker to take on a road trip, move from room to room around the house, or just hang out outside for a pool party.
“This is a sneak peek at Brain X. We’ll have a full-scale announcement at South by Southwest in Austin in mid-March,” concludes Pinkerton, noting that the company will have speakers with smaller form factor tech. It suggests that A more modest price range on the drawing board.
