Scott,

This process has little if any effect upon harmonic distortion. Using a Liberty Audio test suite, it is possible to find some very minor trade off from odd order to even order distortion. But, if it is indeed occurring, it is so small as to be useless as a descriptor for the audible changes. The typical test for Intermodulation Distortion does not cast any useful light on the event either. I do not have access to a spectrum analyzer and laser inferometer, with cross correlation software, to test with, so I must use analogy and reason. I am not an audio engineer, I am a magnetician, an applied magnetics designer, so I am sure I am going to step all over everyone's carefully defined models here. I do it regularly when designing audio transformers, to very good effect, so I am not going to apologize.

IM distortion is usually very narrowly defined as a test of the artifacts resulting from two discrete and carefully filtered sine wave tones. This is a useful test and reveals many gross problems and is a way to discover their variability when changing gross physical characteristics of drivers. Certainly one of the major reasons that drivers have made so much "progress" in the last 30 years.

Intermodulation is not confined to two sine wave tones in the real world. In fact the bulk of disruptive IM signals are created by non sine wave signals, acting upon other non sine wave signals, acting upon and at a level relatively close in amplitude to signals that have sine wave content. This activity grossly reduces intelligibility from the standpoint of an intelligent correlator. One assembling sound into a format, useful for a coherent understanding of that signal, to arise in our wet ware processor so we can "hear" the information rather than discard it as random noise. I know of no other terminology but IM distortion reduction that even begins to convey a classification that this unusual process might fall within. If we should call this something other than IM distortion reduction that is fine, but, we will have to come up with a classification name for it. Other than "Pure BS" please.

As an example of the phenomenon. Take any moderately priced CB radio, with its bandwidth limited and un-self-damped paper cone driver. To attempt to "hear" and follow a conversation with one other person, amidst the amazing amount of non sinusoidal noise and other overlapping conversations available is so difficult that a potentially useful, public radio communication, format failed because of it. If you treat one of those speakers with my process, all of the noise remains, all of the other conversations remain, but they no longer interact in a way that interrupts a coherent understanding of one or more conversations. The random noise no longer corrupts a signal that an intelligent correlator can present as a coherent and intelligible signal to our awarness. It does this by eliminating the transient reflections from all of the terminus edges of the area in question. If you treat two of the sort of units that use the speaker as a microphone, intelligibility between them jumps, alarmingly.

THIS IS NOT A FORM OF GROSS MASS DAMPING. THIS IS NOT LIMITED TO A NARROW BAND OF FREQUENCIES. THIS WORKS ON ALL SURFACES AT ALL FREQUENCIES AND ALL AMPLITUDES TO THE SAME DEGREE. PERIOD. I really do understand that this makes no sense in the conventional model based comprehension of speaker related phenomena. Doesn't seem to matter, this does work and in a very pervasive fashion at that. The models will have to conform to reality, eventually.

The pattern is related in size to the perimeter of the surface it is to control. The number of blocks, defined as a set of two pattern members on two different and defined radii remains consistent, regardless of the total linear distance traversed. The size of the block grows, not the number. Their relationship to the area affected must be carefully controlled, or, other frequency related phenomena will be experienced. These other effects can be useful and I will describe them as we go along.

Do not be alarmed by the negative reaction that this process causes in the conservative calculator based audio engineering society members. Go and listen to a typical sound reinforcement situation and make your own decisions about how well controlled the above described problems are.

Eventually, an innovative engineer, with tools useful for the task, will undertake to discover what is going on and describe it with a mathematical model that others can cook book into their designs. At that point this will become a main stream technique and everyone's sound will go up in quality of coherent information transfer. I will likely be long dead by that point and the patent will have run it's course. But it will still be available and perhaps the white paper will also be available and possibly even careful and detailed instructions for how to implement the process will have survived, to trigger this future engineer into activity.

Till then you can come along on this journey, practice a bit to acquire the techniques, listen a bit to begin to comprehend how the changes affect you and eventually make some pretty amazing changes in the amount of information you can retrieve from your "Audio" gear. Or not. Sort of depends upon Romy's level of patience right at this time.

Bud