FeONIC
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| Founded | 1999 |
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| Headquarters | Hull, England |
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Key people
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Simon Woodward, Brian Smith, Bob Van Orden, Kamlesh Prajapati industry = Professional audiovisual industry |
| Products | Professional AV, sound drives, or invisible speakers that are concealed and optimize the effects of sound and audio homepage: www.feonic.com |
Feonic is a private company that has a patented line of invisible or hidden sound / audio drives that are sold worldwide to businesses, governments, and others, to maximize the effect of sound on human behavior, and is headquartered in Hull, England.
Contents
History / Development
Feonic was founded in 1999 as a spin-off from Hull University to commercialize the research and expertise in magnetorestriction and the use of the metal alloy, Terfenol-D. Feonic experimented with many uses such as vibration control and transportation then focused on sound applications starting in the early 2000’s. Early products include the Soundbug, a consumer-focused product to create sound on many surfaces, and sound on glass windows, under the trademark “Whispering Windows”. Using Feonic products to produce sound on glass, aka Whispering Windows, continues as a use-case today and has been proven to increase retail sales up to 50% during promotional periods. In 2008, the company developed a new generation of sound products, the F-series, which produced significantly better performance across a wide range of materials and were more suitable for commercial or business use versus a consumer product. The company is no longer marketing to consumers. In the 2013-2014 time period, the F-series underwent another major redesign and series of enhancements.
Note that Feonic went private in 2014, and was re-structured in 2015 in order to focus on the global business-to-business marketplace.
Technology
Feonic has 14 worldwide patents granted and more pending relating to sound, audio, and energy harvesting. The technologies utilize magnetorestriction and the alloy, Terfenol-D, which has the highest level of dimension or shape changing during the process or magnetization. This material was developed for sonar devices by the US Navy but is now commercially available and used in several industrial applications not relating to sound or audio. The sound products developed by Feonic use the unique force created by the change in shape of this material to create very tiny, non-damaging vibrations. The Feonic products transfer and place this energy upon a wide range of surface materials, wood, glass, metals, plastics, fiberboard, wall board, and others to produce highly intelligible, wide bandwidth sound avoiding the use, appearance, and sound dispersion characteristics of conventional loudpeakers.
Markets & Applications
Feonic’s products are used in markets including:
- digital signage
- digital out of home advertising
- education
- hotels & hospitality
- kiosks
- manufacturing facilities
- museums
- office and workplace environments
- presentation and lecture centers
- property development
- restaurants
- retail in-store adverts and promotions
- retail displays
- retail music
- transit facilities and airports
- theme parks and resorts
- trade shows and conventions
Feonic’s sound products are used by a wide variety of business or commercial end-users. Architects, designers, retail planners, marketers, sound experts, and professional audio-video designer and integrators may all select to use Feonic products.
The commonalities are the need to use sound and audio in order to:
- increase sales
- increase footfall or traffic
- increase dwell time
- improve advertising or brand recall or awareness
- improve the effectiveness and payback of digital signage and kiosks
- be better understood or heard (or better intelligibility)
- increase productivity of workers or students
- limit or mask undesirable sound
- avoid hot spots or reverberations created by loudspeakers
- create sound zones
At the same time, Feonic audio drives do not have any impact at all upon the physical or visual design of a space or environment. The Feonic products use common materials and devices to create sound and are invisible or concealed.
Feonic’s drives are also able to withstand heat, cold and wetness well beyond loudspeakers, are compact, and considered theft or vandal-resistant as they are concealed.
Regular, un-modified sources of audio, such as amplifiers, equalizers, and mp3 players are used to provide the content. Specialized inputs or sources are not required.
