GORE^® Acoustic Vents

Acoustic science is at the heart of Gore’s competitive advantage–with significant investments in new technologies, advanced equipment, unique testing methods, modeling services and a dedicated team of specialists–all geared to deliver products of uncompromising quality  that meet our customers’ expectations and are fit for their intended end use.

Our dedication to solutions-driven products, backed by decades of experience in material sets and capabilities research, has put GORE® Acoustic Vents at the forefront of innovation, allowing us to deliver unparalleled liquid and particulate protection while maintaining exceptional levels of acoustic performance and consistency.

Each venting solution is precision engineered to achieve the highest Ingress Protection (IP) standards while balancing the trade-offs of acoustic loss. Our scientists and engineers have even developed additional protocols to better reflect real-world conditions and ensure industry-leading performance, durability and reliability… even after exposure to water.

With over a decade of experience and designs in thousands of portable electronics devices, Gore is uniquely qualified to provide and develop optimal venting solutions for a variety of applications.

GORE® Acoustic Vents for Immersion Protection

Ideal for portable electronic devices exposed to water challenges, including immersion, that require good sound transparency and acoustic performance.

Today's consumers increasingly demand immersion-resistant handsets, wearables and other mobile electronic devices. Normally, reliable water resistance involves a trade-off in audio quality, however, GORE® Acoustic Vents for Immersion Applications facilitate optimal acoustic performance while effectively repelling water, other fluids and particulates.

Our venting solutions are engineered to repel water, sweat, cleaning solutions and low surface tension liquids like detergent and oils without sacrificing acoustic performance. Smartphones can be protected from water as deep as 5 meters for as long as 30 minutes and wearables as deep as 50 meters for 10 minutes.

One of Gore’s basic principles is to ensure our products are engineered to meet or exceed the needs of our customers’ specific applications, a concept we refer to as “fitness for use”. All our vents are subjected to rigorous material qualification and testing–including measuring transmission loss, our Extended Water Entry Pressure (eWEP) test and many other protocols that go above and beyond IP standards.

GORE® Acoustic Vents for Dust and Splash Protection

Ideal for portable electronic devices that need to stand up to dust and splash hazards that require good sound transparency and acoustic performance–rated up to IP6x:

In audio devices with woven vent material, metal particles can be drawn in by, and settle on top of, the speaker magnet. As these particles accumulate, their increasing mass and weight inhibits the diaphragm from producing high levels of sound pressure.

GORE® Acoustic Vents for Dust and Splash Applications use non-woven membrane materials with a three-dimensional tortuous path structure. This allows them to effectively capture particles of varied shapes and sizes while protecting against acoustic degradation, enhancing both speaker longevity and device reliability.

For devices designed to have openings near the transducers, our engineers have also developed a rigorous “moving showerhead” test designed to increase the likelihood of water directly splashing on device openings–as would happen under real-world conditions. Using these Gore protocols, we can predict how well devices will be protected against splash hazards with greater accuracy. In addition, they allow us to evaluate potential housing solutions during the development process, before the device has been completed and assembled.

Gore ensures all aspects of our vents are optimized to meet the specific requirements of each customer application, from water resistance level to acoustic performance to geometries.

GORE® Acoustic Vents for Immersion

GORE® Acoustic Vents for Dust and Splash

We offer a range of standard vents for you to choose from:

Predicting the conditions your product will encounter can be difficult, so our application engineers are on hand to assist in selecting the right solution for your specific application requirements–ensuring the selected solution meets the protection requirement while still providing the best acoustic performance.

Factors that might be considered include:

• What is the minimum requirement for acoustic consistency?
• What is the maximum level of transmission loss allowable?
• How will the product be used?
• What is the required frequency range?
• What are the required liquid, particulate and contaminant protection levels?
• Will your device need protection against water immersion?
• What shape, size and thickness of the vent is required?
• How much space is available within your device enclosure? Will there be an open cavity?
• What surface will the vent be mounted on and what type of adhesive is required?
• What are the minimum and maximum temperatures your device may face?
• Will vents be mounted by hand or by pick and place machine?

Integrating portable vents with your products can be a technical nightmare since all the requirements make installation costly and time consuming. Gore drives down development time with easy and reliable vent installation all backed by the fact we currently support over 1 billion installations globally. Please see below for our product installation manuals and videos:

Leading OEMs have specified over 5 billions of GORE® Portable Electronic Vents because they know our products and services can help accelerate their development of innovative and differentiated devices in fast-paced, highly competitive markets.

Read about how the GORE® Portable Electronic Vents team of engineers and scientists are working with customers to ensure delivery of the best possible venting, production and customized solutions:

Get all the media and documentation available for GORE® Portable Electronic Vents: