The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office officially published a series of 44 newly granted patents for Apple Inc. today. In this particular report we briefly cover three audio related patents covering HomePod, audio beamforming and EarPods.

#1 Subwoofer with Multi-Lobe Magnet

Apple's granted patent relates to speakers and more specifically to an array speaker for distributing music uniformly across a room. A number of audio drivers can be radially distributed within a speaker housing so that an output of the drivers is distributed evenly throughout the room. In some embodiments, the exit geometry of the audio drivers can be configured to bounce off a surface supporting the array speaker to improve the distribution of music throughout the room. The array speaker can include a number of vibration isolation elements distributed within a housing of the array speaker. The vibration isolation elements can be configured to reduce the strength of forces generated by a subwoofer of the array speaker.

Apple's patent FIG. 9C below shows a subwoofer with a magnet having a number of protruding lobes; FIG. 9D shows the subwoofer depicted in FIG. 9C and a number of capacitors arranged between the lobes of the magnet.

Apple's granted patent 10,257,608 was originally filed in Q2 2017 and published today by USPTO. For more details, see Apple's patent here.

#2 Spatial Compressor for Beamforming Speakers

Apple notes on their HomePod webpage that "A custom-designed array of seven beamforming tweeters, each with its own amplifier, creates tremendous directional control." One of the patents covering beamforming speakers was granted to Apple today by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Technically, Apple's granted patent abstract defines their invention this way: "An audio receiver receives one or more input audio signals representing one or more channels of a sound content and applies a first beam pattern to the input audio signals to generate a first set of beam-formed audio signals. The audio receiver determines a second beam pattern that is less directional than the first beam pattern. The audio receiver determines that driving of a loudspeaker array using the first set of beam-formed audio signals will cause one or more transducers of the loudspeaker array to operate beyond an operational threshold, and in response applies the second beam pattern to the input audio signals to generate a second set of beam-formed audio signals. The audio receiver drives the loudspeaker array using the second set of beam-formed audio signals."

Apple's patent FIG. 2 below is a graph showing various types of beam patterns with varying levels of directivity that have constant spatial power; FIG. 4 is a block diagram illustrating another audio receiver that drives a loudspeaker array.

Apple's granted patent 10,257,639 was originally filed in Q1 2017 and published today by USPTO. For more details, see Apple's patent here.

The two inventors listed on the patent are Dan Klingler (Audio Software Engineer) and Adam Kriegel (Software Engineer Manager, Audio Design and Prototyping).  

Added to the list of inventors is "Nunntawi Dynamics LLC. After some research I discovered that the two engineers, now with Apple, were from or owners of Nunntawi Dynamics as you could see in the graphic image below from Europe. You could also see this patent under Nunntawi Dynamics in the U.S. here. Apple likely acquired the company.

(CLICK ON IMAGE ABOVE TO ENLARGE)

#3 Open-Air Earbuds

Apple was granted patent 10,257,601 today by the U.S. Patent Office officially titled "Open-air earbuds and methods for making the same." Considering the patent does mention "Wireless" earbuds as well as wired, today's granted patent technically covers the basics of the break-out AirPods product to a certain degree. You could review the full patent here for more details.

The lone inventor of this patent, Jeffrey Hayashida, worked as a Product Design Engineer with projects related to the iPhone and iPod. He was also listed as part of the Accessories Group – Accessories Lead for projects relating to EarPods, Lightning adapters and more. Hayashida has since left Apple and now works for Google as a Mechanical Engineer behind projects such as Pixel 2 XL as phone lead.