Dynamic Balance® Design Technology

When it comes to high performance loudspeakers, the whole really is the sum of its parts.

---

Our universal theory of high performance audio

Stu says: building a high performance loudspeaker is a lot like juggling. It involves the balancing of multiple dynamic elements. The act of juggling these elements is, like juggling axes or knives, fraught with danger. One misstep, and the imbalance can result in poor performance, or worse. (Especially if there are knives or axes involved.)

Thankfully, we’re talking about loudspeakers here. And the engineers at Polk Audio decided a long time ago that they were going to dedicate themselves to intensive research in an effort to defeat some of the classic flaws of loudspeaker design.

We developed a unique, all-inclusive design theory we called “Dynamic Balance.” Dynamic Balance uses advanced analysis of a design’s entire electro-acoustic and mechanical system to help select better materials and more efficient geometry. With deep analysis, we can pinpoint and eradicate elements that reduce performance standards. In other words, we can build more realistic-sounding loudspeakers.

Our engineers began by examining the ubiquitous, performance-robbing resonances that develop on and within loudspeaker materials, such as the “modal resonances” of speaker cones. Modal resonances are distortions caused by vibrations on speaker cones. Modal resonances are a major cause of frequency response aberrations in loudspeakers. That is, “bad sounds.”

Saving the world from bad audio

The battle against bad sounds began in 1988, when Polk Audio engineers joined engineers at Johns Hopkins University to develop a Full-Field Heterodyning Laser Interferometer System. Basically, a laser-equipped electron microscope, ok? The laser part was able to illuminate the microscoped part in previously impossible ways.

This super-advanced tool allowed Polk Audio researchers, for the first time ever, to see the entire vibrating surface of a speaker cone’s material on a molecular level. It revealed the real-time development of never-before-seen modal resonances on the cone material!

Lots of trial and error led Polk Audio engineers to several materials that worked together to defeat this modal resonance. Combining unique materials in new ways, along with new geometry and state-of-the-art construction techniques, we were able to virtually tune out the destructive modal resonances on speaker cones. We could actually see our innovation work using the Laser Interferometer System. (You can, too, in our cool animations below!)

Using this Dynamic Balance theory of design, our driver material is specially tuned to produce a flat, uncolored frequency response. Its true transparency reveals a wide dynamic range, with sharp details, and no hint of strain. Polk Audio sound is always clean, clear and effortless.

Let the seamless soundstage envelop you

Another benefit of this process is that our drivers all have the same sonic signature, for seamless blending between speakers. As your image travels from speaker to speaker in a stereo or multi-channel mix, you will never be jolted by a false note or bad blend. With Timbre-Matched Dynamic Balance drivers, our sound systems create a more realistic soundstage that envelops you in the action!

“The result [of Dynamic Balance] is a speaker system that is exceedingly smooth and free of resonant aberrations from top to bottom.”
- Widescreen Review, October 1996

BACK TO MAIN TECHNOLOGY PAGE