LG's 'Invisible' Speakers Are Ready To Thump 3D Audio Inside Your Car

LG Display just announced a new 2.5mm thin panel, called the Thin Actuator Sound Solution, that could change how audio is reproduced and consumed in automobiles. The Korean display manufacturer's solution to in-vehicle speakers eschews conventional speaker design. Instead of coils, magnets, and cones, the Thin Actuator Sound Solution (TASS) uses LG's film-type exciter tech that vibrates off of different surfaces or materials of the vehicle cabin.

Each TASS panel is 5.9 x 3.5 inches (150 x 90 mm) and only 2.5 mm thin. To put that into perspective, that's about the height of a Pixel 7, width of a credit card, and 10 percent of the average car speaker's thickness. At 0.1 lbs (40 g), the panel is also impressively lightweight.

All these elements allow for panels to be installed almost anywhere, such as the headliner, the A/B/C pillars, seats, door panels, and dashboard. Removing speakers from their traditional locations has numerous benefits. Sonically, automakers can better tune and surround passengers with audio and noise cancelling, including creating a 3D soundscape.

Yeo Chun-Ho, Vice President and Head of Business Development at LG Display said that they, "...have transformed the conventionally heavy and bulky speaker into a high-quality ‘invisible’ sound solution.” Another plus would be internal packaging, whereby more interior space or storage is made available by removing the bulky spaces taken up by speaker boxes, 

This Thin Actuator Sound Solution panel is similar in practice to LG's own Crystal Sound displays, but adapted for automotive use. We would be very interested to see the possibilities that this panel will bring, not just in audio, but also in harmonics or noise vibration and harshness (NVH) control.

TASS comes hot off the heels of LG Displays' other innovation—the 12-inch full-color stretchable display that was launched earlier in November. LG Display plans to begin showing the TASS off at CES 2023. with the aim for commercialization starting in the first half of the same year.