There's a new lease of life for flat-panel loudspeakers: Layered Sound is a new venture by Canadian concert pianist and inventor Shelley Katz, who has developed a combination of conventional and NXT-style distributed mode loudspeakers (DMLs). "He was in search of the perfect digital piano," revealed Ian Gair, well-known for many years at Fane Acoustics and now Layered Sound's executive for Commercial Audio. "Having found that the speaker output was the real problem, he identified NXT speakers as the potential equivalent of the piano soundboard - but it only worked when he combined them with conventional ones. One set deals with the direct onset of sound, the other handles the early reflections that provide clarity and depth."One PhD later, funding was secured and Layered Sound went into business. Obviously, digital pianos aside, all of the previously identified applications for NXT are now target markets - in fact Amina Technologies, the Huntingdon-based manufacturer of DMLs, is now making Layered Sound products under licence.
