from Hacker News

High-quality OLED displays now enabling integrated thin and multichannel audio

by LorenDB on 5/28/25, 1:53 AM with 78 comments

• by layer8 on 5/29/25, 1:55 PM

  The talk about pixels is misleading. The research paper doesn't mention pixels. They attached a 3x3 array of piezoelectric elements (roughly 3 cm in diameter each) behind a 13" OLED panel (one picture also shows a 5x4 array), using a sturdy frame structure to minimize interference of acoustic vibrations between the 9 (or 20) elements of the array.

  Not to say that this isn't interesting, but it’s not display pixels emitting sound.

• by lmpdev on 5/29/25, 8:16 AM

  Would the vibration be detectable via touch?

  It would be wild to integrate this into haptics

• by kragen on 5/29/25, 11:06 AM

  They just mounted the display on top of an array of piezo buzzers, is all. But it's true that that wouldn't work very well with an LCD.

• by atoav on 5/29/25, 10:51 AM

  So you are saying we get dieplays that could run wavefield synthesis?

  If you don't know what wavefield synthesis is: you basically have an array of evenly spaced speakers and for each virtual sound source you drive each individual speaker with a specially delayed signal that recreates the wavefield a sound source would create if it occupied that space. This is basically as close as you can get to the thing being in actual space.

  Of course the amount of delay lines and processing needed is exhorbitant and for a screen the limiting factor is the physical dimension of the thing, but if you can create high resulation 2D loudspeaker arrays that glow, you can also create ones that do not.

• by teekert on 5/29/25, 9:09 AM

  I guess there are limits, like a pixel should never move more then its size, or you limit resolution (at least from some angels). So deep basses are out of the question?

  It is getting very interesting, sound, possibly haptics. We already had touch of course, including fingerprint (and visuals of course). We are more and more able to produce richt sensory experiences for panes of glass.

• by walterbell on 5/29/25, 8:10 AM

  Could such a display also function as a microphone?

• by formerly_proven on 5/29/25, 9:00 AM

  Many TFT and OLED panels today can produce sound unintentionally based on screen contents. This is mostly noticeable with repeating horizontal lines, which tend to produce whining at some fraction of the line frequency. Likely electrostiction.

  This here seems to be about adding separate piezoelectric actuators to the display though, it doesn’t seem to use the panel itself.

  > by embedding ultra-thin piezoelectric exciters within the OLED display frame. These piezo exciters, arranged similarly to pixels, convert electrical signals into sound vibrations without occupying external space.

• by jtthe13 on 5/29/25, 8:42 AM

  That’s super impressive. I guess that would work for a notification speaker. But for full sound I have doubts about the low frequencies. I would assume you would need a woofer anyway in a home setting.

• by steelbrain on 5/29/25, 8:41 AM

  This is a long shot but anyone know if there's an audio recording of the sound the display produced? Curious

  Edit: Found it: https://advanced.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/advs.20...

  Go to supporting information on that page and open up the mp4 files

• by chris_engel on 5/29/25, 11:00 AM

  I wonder about the mentioned application in mobile devices. with mobile and tablet devices one usually has a very durable glass layer between the screen and the outside world - not sure if sound would ve able topass through that.

• by tuukkah on 5/29/25, 8:14 AM

  > This breakthrough enables each pixel of an OLED display to simultaneously emit different sounds

  > The display delivers high-quality audio

  Are multiple pixels somehow combined to reproduce low frequencies?

• by ra120271 on 5/29/25, 9:53 AM

  It would be interesting to learn in time what this means for the durability of the display. Do the vibrations induce stresses that increase component failure?

  Also how differing parts of the screen can generate different sound sources to create a sound scape tailored for the person in front of the screen (eg laptop user)?

  Interesting tech to watch!

• by ComputerGuru on 5/29/25, 6:55 PM

  Seems somewhat niche due to physics. When you are ten feet away from a screen (or even three), you can scarcely distinguish between audio emanating from the upper-left “pixel/voxel” (to give a new meaning to an old word) and from the bottom-right, let alone from two adjacent locations.

• by amelius on 5/29/25, 1:41 PM

  How can this produce directional sound beams if there is a glass plate covering the display?

• by amelius on 5/29/25, 9:01 AM

  Can the video and audio be controlled independently?

• by dedicate on 5/29/25, 8:06 AM

  My mind immediately goes to VR – imagine how much more immersive that would be!

• by charlie0 on 5/29/25, 1:55 PM

  I would guess the bass is nonexistent here. Cool idea though.

• by Xss3 on 5/29/25, 10:24 PM

  Can this be used like a phased array?

• by cubefox on 5/29/25, 8:19 AM

  This is impressive. Though perhaps not very useful. Humans (and animals in general) are quite bad at precisely locating sound anyway. We only have two input channels, the right and the left ear, and any location information comes from a signal difference (loudness usually) between the two.