US 5,761,320 · Granted 1998-06-02

The Patent That Made Your Whole House Listen to One Speaker

Imagine controlling music, intercoms, and doorbells across different rooms in your home from one central control panel. This 1998 patent describes exactly that: a smart audio system that lets you pick which speakers play what sound, mute certain rooms when you're on the phone, and even label each zone however you want.

Curated and verified by the IsItPatented Editorial team

The plain-English version

What it protects

The claim covers a processor-based master control unit that selectively broadcasts audio signals to speakers in multiple zones throughout a building. Specifically, it protects the ability to independently control which zones receive which audio source, mute selected zones while broadcasting pages, integrate telephone and doorbell signals into the speaker network, group zones together while maintaining independent volume and tone controls per zone, and assign custom alphanumeric names to each zone for easy identification. What's protected here is the combination of centralized control logic, selective zone routing, and the user interface that ties it all together.

Why it matters

This patent, filed in 1995 and granted in 1998, arrived at the threshold of the home automation era. It captures core functionality that became standard in whole-home audio systems: the ability to treat a house as a network of controllable audio zones rather than isolated rooms with independent speakers. Elan Home Systems, the assignee, became a notable player in residential automation, and this patent protected a key architectural innovation—the idea that a central processor could intelligently route and manage audio across a distributed network while preserving zone-level customization. The patent helped establish a template for smart-home audio that influenced competitors and product design for decades.

Real-world use

When you press a button on a keypad in your kitchen to turn on jazz in the living room while keeping the bedroom silent, or when your doorbell rings and a chime sounds only in the entryway, you're using the core logic this patent locked down.

Original USPTO abstract

A signal distribution and communication arrangement includes an electronic processor-based master control unit which controls the broadcast of different types of signals through speakers located in various zones. The system includes a telephone interfaced with a door speaker controller to allow communication between the telephone and a door speaker. A page may now be broadcast over selected speakers and zones selectively muted to allow private communication when the page is answered. Also included is a doorbell interface circuit that responds to a doorbell source. The doorbell source may be activated by any one of a plurality of doorbell switches. An additional aspect of the present invention includes grouping zones together so that all source selection works concurrently, and each subzone in the group retains independent volume control, bass and treble. Further, a new sub-set of zone programming allows the installer to label a zone as any alpha-numeric seven-digit name.

Patent details

Publication number: US 5,761,320
Filing date: 1995-06-26
Grant date: 1998-06-02
Assignee: Elan Home Systems, L.L.C.
Inventor(s): FARINELLI; ROBERT, CARRIN; THOMAS PATRICK
CPC class: H04R27/00

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