Hypercube Speakers

     The hypercube loudspeaker was patented in 1980 by Thomas Weiss and Matthew Kennedy, and marked an advancement in sealed loudspeaker enclosure design. The enclosure shape is based on a rhombic dodecahedron which is an interesting shape that can be thought of as a 3 dimensional shadow of the higher dimensional hypercube. Unlike a typical loudspeaker enclosure which relies on stuffing to damp internal standing waves, the hypercube loudspeaker enclosure benefits from the unique geometry of the rhombic dodecahedron whose internal boundary conditions allow a broad and continuous range of standing waves to be supported. Externally, the somewhat spherical shape reduces the effect of edge diffraction. The practical outcome of this simple design is a low distortion, highly transparent sounding loudspeaker.