Sonos has announced the acquisition of Mayht Holding BV (aka Mayht) for $100 million dollars. Mayht is a Netherlands-based company that has invented a new, revolutionary approach to speaker driver construction that enables smaller and lighter speakers without reducing the audio quality.
Let’s take a closer look at Mayht’s speaker technology and why Sonos jumped on this opportunity.
Mayht Heartmotion Speaker Technology
Mayht’s Heartmotion(R) Technology represents the first fully balanced dual membrane speaker driver. This breakthrough provides a major improvement in key speaker capabilities such as maximum output, size, weight, and flexibility.
Heartmotion(R) speaker technology can be used in soundbars, voice-assisted speakers, wireless home speakers, portable, automotive, and professional speakers
Main Benefits of Heartmotion(R) Technology
Reduce Speaker Size
A Heartmotion(R) designed speaker driver of a specific size can output sound at levels that would normally require a much larger driver. The reason this is possible is because of the incredibly high air displacement (membrane excursion x membrane areas) of the heartmotion driver.
Mayht provides two examples:
- A 3.5-inch diameter Heartmotion(R) driver has the same output as a conventional 8-inch diameter driver.
- A 1.5-inch Heartmotion(R) driver has the same output as a conventional 3.5-inch diameter driver.
Self-Balancing Speaker Driver
Conventional speaker drivers are not self-balanced. This results in speaker shaking (which is often countered by adding weight to the speaker or using multiple drivers). Heartmotion(R) is the world’s first self-balancing driver tech, allowing lightweight audio systems that do not shake – solving a major problem in the audio industry.
Design Flexibility
For maximum design flexibility, Heartmotion(R) technology provides three air displacement variations. Dual firing, Front Side firing, and Front firing. In order to redirect the air, Mayht developed the Heartmotion(R) Duct to redirect air displacement of one or both membranes.
Addressing Air Pressure Issues
In free air, there is very little air pressure working against the movement of a driver membrane. However, when conventional drivers are placed in an enclosure, the air pressure prevents the membrane from making high excursions – resulting in a high amplifier power is needed, especially to get more low-frequency bass output.
Other Benefits of Heartmotion(R) Technology
- Less Material is needed for production.
- Smaller size and less weight.
- Less freight shipping costs.
- Reduced carbon footprint.
What All This Means
With this acquisition, Sonos is not resting on its laurels. Sonos wireless speakers have been well-received by both consumers and reviewers, but if they can up speaker performance and retain smaller form factors, that would be a significant edge against their competitors.
Along with the Mayht acquisition, there are strong indications that Sonos is also developing a “Home Theater OS” aka “Next Generation Home Theater Experience” that would combine a new video streaming platform with its audio platform.
For example, think of something like the Sonos ARC soundbar (or a newly developed wireless system, similar to Enclave or Platin) with a built-in streaming platform similar to Roku, FireTV, Apple TV, or Android TV.
Combine that with Mayht speaker technology (and, hopefully, reasonable prices) and Sonos would definitely increase its market penetration in the streaming and home theater markets.
Tip: Sonos currently offers a music streaming service called Sonos Radio.
As more details emerge on the possible Mayht and/or Home Theater OS implementations, we will update this article or post and link to companion articles as needed.
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Jean-Francois Héon
April 14, 2022 at 2:33 am
Now I want IAG to buy them so we can have mini Lintons & mini Mission 770!
stevenswall
January 27, 2023 at 10:26 pm
Lintons and Missions are focused on legacy designs rather than extracting maximum performance for the available speaker volume. They, like ATC, PMB, and several other companies would be going against their archaic nature pairing something like this with their lossy, heat based crossovers and poor cabinet designs.
Hopefully Sonos can use them to their full potential and we’ll get something with the sound of a Devialet Phantom in a soundbar form with these Mayht drivers.
The only downfall will likely be that Sonos and most other companies don’t know how to make a center channel speaker with good vertical and horizontal dispersion like Genelec and Devialet and KEF and Kali do with their coaxial drivers.