I just got off the phone with Robert Putnam, and I thought it would be worthwhile to share his comments with the rest of you.
Since I hadn't heard any real news out of ATC for quite some time now, I sent a letter to their info address a couple weeks ago asking what was going on, and Robert Putnam called me to respond.
He told me that they've purposely been in a quiet period ever since about March and that they expect to be emerging from it fairly soon. Most of the effort during that time has been spent perfecting the technology. The biggest sticking point has apparently been the emitter technology itself, which is still not completely ideal. Apparently, no one's ever tried this kind of this before, and some emitter technologies that were pitched to them as perfect for what they're doing turned out not to be. He said they're currently working with six primary suppliers for the emitters, ranging from huge multinational corporations to little garage operations.
The current incarnation of the technology is capable of delivering a maximum SPL of about 100 dB and a frequency range of roughly 100-16,000 Hz... not hi-fi, but certainly acceptable for certain applications. He cited personal-computer applications and television sets as examples.
This quiet period has also given them time to solidify their proprietary position with regard to this technology. They've failed several more patents, with a few more on the way, and acquired technology from outside that complements the stuff they're doing (he mentioned arrangements with some of their emitter suppliers, for example).
The first-generation technology is performing well in the lab right now, but still has some durability problems in some real-world usage environments. They expect to have these bugs worked out and have a shippable product soon, but they don't expect anyone to be shipping actual product in 1997. The only technological impediments to a full-range hi-fi quality version of HSS are again the difficulties in manufacturing the emitters; they expect to be able to surmount those problems and have a second-generation full-range product in shippable condition in 12 to 18 months.
They're still doing public demos of the HSS technology on the first Thursday of every month-- someone who's actually located in the San Diego area might want to go check one of them out. I don't know whether they're demonstrating anything different from what they were demonstrating in March, however.
They've apparently generated quite a bit of interest, and are currently in licensing discussions with a number of companies. He described all of them as "large" companies. He seemed to expect the first of these deals to be consummated within the next month or so.
He expects to have more news to announce within the next several weeks, so hopefully things will begin to happen sometime soon. I'll certainly be interested to see how this plays out...
[Carl, in answer to your question, ATC moved recently; you can get their current address off their Web site.]
Anyway, I hope y'all find this information helpful, and if anyone from ATC is monitoring this discussion and sees that I made any mistakes, please correct me.
--rtg |
