Slashdot Mirror
Targeted Sound Beams
Mr_Kcleen writes: "Wired has a story on using sound beams targeted to only one person. They discuss various uses, from musical performances to possible weaponization." This is another one of those ideas that are right around the corner, really, honest.
I only hope that this won't be adopted by RIAA.
People who like this sort of sig will find this the sort of sig they like.
one step closer to the reality of that game where the bad guy named "Dollar bill" wants to build a artificial moon and use it for 24/7 advertising.
--- No, english is not my mother tongue.
In a true sense of the word. Now you can communicate with your horse and vice versa from long distances.
i hope that explains those voices that keep telling me to horde my precious bodily fluids.
mp3s by me
The New York Times is also covering the article (free reg) or you could just go to The Audio Spotlight's home page for a more detailed account of their technology.
Could be fun to play with.
when they invented earhpones...
Am I the only one thinking of ways to manipulate people into doing things silly? Does anyone remember that scene from 'Real Genius' where they put the radio in that guy's braces and had him believe he was talking to God? This would make things so much simpler...you wouldn't have to mess around with anyone's braces...just point and shoot and blammo instant God.
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
every day, technology brings us a little bit closer to being able to make our younger siblings think that they've gone insane :D
mp3s by me
Finally science has reached it's peak. A surefire way to get the beer guy's attention at your next baseball game. On a serious note, hasn't the pentagon being looking into ultrasound devices for crowd control and similar applications for a LONG time (say 20+ years?) I seem to recall a Discovery Channel special on that a while back.
. .
General - Why we could make a devestating weapon out of that!
Inventor - It's a tortilla maker. .
General - Why yes, but think of the scientific principles it displays!
Inventor - It's a cast iron tortilla maker.
General - We need 800,000 by next week. How does 300$ per unit sound?
Inventor - The Freedom Flattener 3000 will be operational by tomorrow General!
Find out about my new childrens book: SS Death Camp Criminal Batallion Go To Monte Carlo For The Massacre
Read up on this post about why karma whoring is bad, and bad for karma whores like you.
Pompei's website hase more detailed information of this here: http://web.media.mit.edu/~pompei/spotlight/ here is a brief description from the site. Technology: Because it is impossible to generate extremely narrow beams of audible sound without extremely large loudspeaker arrays, we instead generate the sound indirectly, using the nonlinearity of the air to convert a narrow beam of ultrasound into a highly directive, audible beam of sound. The device transmits a narrow beam of ultrasound (blue), which, due to the inherent nonlinearity of the air itself, distorts (changes shape) very slightly as it travels. This distortion creates, along with new ultrasonic frequencies, audible artifacts (green) which can be mathematically predicted, and therefore controlled. By constructing the proper ultrasonic beam, this nonlinearity can be used to create, within the beam itself, an audible sound beam containing any sound desired. This is presently done in real-time using low cost circuitry, a specially designed amplifier, and transducers developed at MIT specifically for this project.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
Is all the energy converted to the audible range or do we get weird things going on elsewhere in the spectrum? Will dogs bark and birds flee?
Sounds like fun technology. I remember reading about it a while back, but had no idea it was being implemented in commercial projects. Portable mp3 players/discman seems like a better car solution to me, but some of the other applications are intriguing. Time to get myself to Tokyo.
And technology has now put yet another profession out of business. And how do you expect ventriloquists to make a living now, huh?
Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
Parabolic microphones and speakers have been around (commericially, even) forever. They already pretty much do this - picking up sound in a straight line from the source from a long distance away.
I guess this might work over a longer distance than parabolic stuff, but they haven't really shown that. So basically, they have a technology that can be duplicated by taking a regular speaker as the focus surrounded by a plastic parabola.
I wonder why they didn't bring that up in the article? Surely they've heard of it?
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
(the collective sound of every recording industry executive having an orgasm)
This was reported in Scientific American in 1998. I also recall seeing it in New Scientist, and on the BBC television programme, "Tomorrow's World" at about the same time.
"E pur si muove!" - attributed to Galileo Galilei, 1564-1642
Trollwave 2002
We are the trolls inside your head
Troll Network Associates
Didn't this same thing happen in Atlas Shrugged?? What next? All Engineers of the world, let's go on strike!
Once it solidifies though, it is definitely a cool sounding (excuse the pun) technology. Use humans only have 2 ears in fixed positions, and I've often wondered how we can locate 3 dimensional sounds using only 2 ears (do we really?). Wonder how this turns out over the next few years...
I saw a demonstration of this technology a few years ago at Epcot center, during the Discover Magazine Awards for Technological Innovation. The demonstrator held this paddle-like device with an array of metallic discs on it, and as he turned it slowly across the crowd, you'd not hear a thing until it was pointed at you. Very cool :)
Please consider making an automatic monthly recurring donation to the EFF
In this space, only you can hear everyone scream.
Lately democracy seems to be based on the skybox, the Happy Meal box, the X-box, and the idiot box.
they're called headphones...
From the article: Pompei imagined that instead of loudspeakers blaring the same cacophony of instruments to all parts of the room, it would be more interesting to selectively spotlight the soloist to the left side of the audience, while featuring the percussion up front, and then switching them around.
But when I go to a concert, I want to hear all the instruments - without having to move around the room.
Also, I get the impression that current tests are being carried out in silent environments with few obstacles. In a concert, you'd have to crank up the volume of such a 'sound spotlight' in order to hear it over the 'general' sound system. And in a crowded hall, the sound from the beam would be reflected more. This would cause the sound generated by the spotlight to 'leak' out of the beam area, making it less effective.
And (also important in a concert) the audio engineer can't hear what he's doing with the spotlights, making it very hard to get right.
..ah,. thats old hat. They demostrated a system like that a few years back on Tomorrows World (BBC, UK). But I expect you were all off drippling over Xena or Buffy......
Someone's playing Backstreet Boys at me....AAAARRRRRRRRGH!!! THE PAIN!!!!!!
Does this mean I'll be able to listen to loud music in my cubicle now without bugging my coworkers?
These people are actually doing something very different.
They're taking ultra-high frequency sound which is way out of our audible range, the higher the frequency the more directional (which is why you dont need to worry too much about where your sub-woofer goes) and recreating audible sound by causing what is known as "beats" in two or more similar high frequency sound beams (guitarist will be familiar with beats, as they are very noticeable when tuning strings without a tuner). These beats are obviously at such a high rate when caused by high freq sounds (60khz!!) that they themselves create audible tones.
If you need an example of how directional and effective high freq sound is, there have been numerous problems in horse racing over the last decade with people mounting high-freq sound emitting devices in binocculars which are then targetted at specific horses, causing them to freak out... Several people have been caught out in Australia with such devices.
So, high frequency sound will not travel as far as low freq, but at 60khz, you can put as much power into it as you like and therefor push it as far as you like without annoying to many people, which makes it a hell of a lot more effective than normal "parabolic" cones or horns.
A brittish company "1-limited" must be using something like this too, because they have created a home-theatre system that provides full surround sound, but only requires ONE speaker! You can reposition the "virtual speakers" around the room using a remote control. It currently does up to 6 channels, but they claim it can be extended to 8 (without hardware upgrade) if new surround sound formats are invented. Have a look at the .PDF that is on this page. They don't give away many technical details unfortunately.
... an N'Sync'ed beam ;)
I met a fellow a while ago who demonstrated this technology to me (and on me!)... He was an acoustics/electronics buff.
His main use for it was to keep cats and dogs out of his yard... if they came close, he'd "zap" them with sound.
According to him, this technology was already in use by the Govt in some areas for crowd control.
He had created a commercially viable product, but was paralyzed by legal and ethical concerns.
He was willing to sell me a handheld unit, provided I promised not to use on people... but having no other use for it, I declined his offer.
but until then it could have some great 3D gaming applications.
The guys you're talking about are using a process which is all done within our hearing spectrum.
The use slight delays to fool our ears into thinking that the sound is surrounding us. The pinnea (ear flaps) are used to channel and delay sound as it enters our ear to give us an impression of where the sound is coming from, so as sound hits our pinnea from one direction, it gets to the eardrum at a slighly different phase than from other directions, our brain learns to interpret these differences and give a direction to the source.
The synthetic version of the process was called transaural. It was written up in the AES journals at least 7 years ago...
Wow, the world of David Lynch's crappy Dune film are getting closer and closer.
(((shudder)))
InigoMontoya
This signature is self-referential.
I builda pain-field generator back in the late 80's and you have been able to build kits for years and years now (remember those amazing discoveries ad's that had levatioion and laser guns? well some of their stuff does work.) You have 2 types of sound field generators.. I am unsure of the targetted, mostly what I seen and dabbled in was wide area, you stand behind the speakers...way behind to keep from getting effected. was massive amounts of certian frequencies that product intense headaches and or the other end of the spectrum that causes un-controllable vomiting and bowel movements. no use of which is safe because of the insane amounts of sound generated... (making the inside of a jet engine sound nice and quiet)
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Does anyone know how such a weapon system would work?
This has been around for ages - a couple of years back two Music Techs at York Uni had a system rigged up that was good enough to do gigs with. I never went to one, but I'm told they had "virtual" sound sources swooping around the room, splitting up and recombining, generally doing some rather cool things. They said at the time they could have targetted a specific person in the audience with a bit of fiddling...
Lurk the Lurker
They discuss various uses, from musical performances to possible weaponization.
OK, I know those damn weirding modules weren't *really* part of the Dune story, but someone had the idea that they would make a great addition to the film, and these folks are obviously on the same track.
**BUSH!** His name is a killing word!
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
I always wondered how in Star Trek they dealt with the privacy invasion of having your messages broadcasted within an entire room (they never wore headphones).. but this actually answers the question.
Now when you see Riker listening to a message from the Captain, you can be safe in the knowledge that Worf isn't listening in.
Really though, this technology is extremely cool. Anything that would have seemed like magic twenty years ago HAS to be cool. I mean, who wouldn't be freaked out by a system that can make one person in a room hear one thing, and another person hear another?
mogorific carpentry experiments
In the example, you'd have to completly document everything about that tortilla maker:
Where the iron was dug out of the ground. (and probably which shift.)
Where the ore was smelted and refined. (and ditto)
Where it was cast. (and ditto.)
Transportation...
All that ISO-8002 (or whatever) paperwork costs much money. $500 hammers make a nice target for senators who want to look good with "Golden Fleese" awards, but there's a reason they cost that much compared to running down to the hardware store.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
I tried doing this about 5 or 6 years ago could never get it to work though. I wonder what their rig is like. I think it was Kodac that was sponsering the research using their gold thinfilm ultrasound transducers. I was just a coop student and it seemed all kind of bogus to me. They never would explain to me the "non-linear effects" of air. Hard to know how to modulate the source to get the proper sound. Congrads guy on a tough dev job. You aced it. And hurry up if my wife and I get in one more fight about the radio station it might not be good.
I'm pretty sure they go way beyond simple delay effects (like the tricks a Sound-Blaster Live can do when wearing headphones, to simulate sounds going behind you and above+below you).
They say: "Unlike virtual surround systems, which employ psycho-acoustic techniques to simulate a surround sound effect, and require rigid listening conditions to be met the Digital Sound Project produces genuine surround sound within a wide listening area" They definately talk about sound-beams which reflect off walls to produce sound which appears to originate on the wall.
Quotes on this page make me think this is going to be something special
Sung by Kate Bush...
Spoiler..........
Its about some people experimenting with a music
system and then the military take it over to make a weapon....... Looks like she got it right so long ago.
And when is her next album?
...it's our favorite song! And it's getting louder too! Oww...It's hurting.
Someone ever tries to kill you, you try to kill them right back!
But that's not what I want to talk about. How did this guy get into MIT and become an engineer at 16 when he was jamming and coming up with old ideas like this? Is this another example of some mediocre guy with lots of marketing skills getting ahead while the guy with real skills is left behind because his "sucking ass" skills are zero?
oh great... I was hoping they wouldn't make those silly weapons from Dune. Someone's going to sneeze into a microphone and it's not going to be pretty :)
The upside: Maybe LAN parties won't sound like 20db of static with spurious explosions.
How long until it's used in an assasination with no evidence to convict the culprit?
Karma Clown
Three Rings for the Elven-gimps under the whip, Seven for the Gaylords in their halls of fudge, Nine for Mortal Puffs doomed to wank men, One for the Dark GayLord on his dark boyfriend In the Land of Shitstab where the Gayness lies. One Ring to wank them all, One Ring to cum them, One Ring to stab them all and in the darkness rape them In the Land of Shitstab where the Gayness lies. He paused, and then said in a deep voice, "This is the Master-Knob, the One knob to wank them all. This is the One knob lost many years ago, to the great weakening of its master's power. Now, he greatly desires to have it up the arse again, - but he must NOT have it!"
www.utgib.tk
I guess this will do away with those great cones of silence we've been using!
-Max
I can see it now, because of security issues all sporting events require facial recognition technology. To offset the cost of implementing the technology the stadiums sell the data to advertisers and lease space for directional sound equipment so they can target ads to specific people in the stadium. Or they could decide to target ads to certain demographics. All white guys in their 40's will get ads for Michale Bolton's greatest hits. Bleh
Cat
Perhaps not the intended use, but I think this might catch on as the next-generation, technological whoopee cushion.
Coming to a Jr. High near you.
-Joe
... and you could have the perfect weapon for getting someone to shut up!
There are many more applications of this technology than the article lists:
Multi-lingual Movie Theaters:
Push a button on your arm rest and get the movie in English, French, Spanish, etc. (or in the original Klingon). Pushing the "G-Rated" button on your child's seat would tune out all those nasty 4-letter words (although visual violence and sex would remain on screen). You could also control the volume from whisper to bone-rattling.
Spot sound cancelation:
Lots of uses for this one. Create quiet zones by coupling with sound cancelation techniques. Imagine being able to punch the "Cone of Silence" (CoS) button in your office when your co-workers are getting a little loud or you need to really concentrate. You could also listen to your favorite music without wearing headphones or disturbing your cube-mate. This would be particularly useful for airplanes. You could engage your CoS when you want to get some rest or simply to block out the airplane noise. The pilot could engage everyone's CoS to nudge people into staying in their seat (if they get up, they get the loud airplane noises again). Or how about for good neighbor relations- are your neighbors complaining that your dog Sparky is keeping them up all night with his barking? Just install the BarkStop(TM) system in your back yard and put the tracking collar on him. All his barking gets muffled. It also acts as an invisible sonic fence to keep him inside the yard.
Super Surround-Sound Home Theater:
DVD's could contain extra sound encoding information to paint the viewing space with individual sounds. All of the sounds in the movie would come from a 3D location in space. This is similar to what the conductor in the article wanted to do.
Point-To-Point Smart Intercom:
Rig an office building with locator ID badges, tracking microphones, and sound projectors. Now you can tap your badge ala ST:TNG and speak to anyone in the building in total privacy. Rig it into the phone system and you can talk to anyone out of the office via their cell phone or in another office building a continent away.
Thrill rides and haunted houses:
Structure the experience by controlling sound location, volume, etc. Easy to make "ghosts" follow behind you, chains rattling above, and so on. Heighten the experience by using selectively transmiting magic frequencies that induce unease and nervousness.
And of course practical jokes:
Echoing footsteps, sqeaky shoes, body sounds, etc. Use your imagination.
The possibilites are almost unlimited. It is funny that what the DOD really wants out of this is a classic SFish Sonic Disruptor.
What I really want out of it is a Sonic Screwdriver.
I.V.
"These laws they're passing won't even compile anymore, let alone execute." - anon
IMHO, the important feature here is having targeted destination of the sound, and not having a forged origin (a pair of cheapo headphones + computer can do that perfectly).
This technology will be a mess. Image a world as one where EVERYONE uses headphones: you'll never know for sure what other people are listening to, nor if what you are listening is audible by others.
unfinished: (adj.)
Who knows if this would actually work, but it might be fun at a concert...
All thats left to do is find what frequency the brain resonates at. Point, click, instant lobotomy.
A portable low power version would be good for harassing public speakers.
So now, not only can your grumpy neighbour throw stuff at your dog in the backyard, he can torment it with aimable ultrasonic waves.
And if you thought idiots with laser pointers were annoying, just wait until they get ahold of the "pocket sound projector."
Lifeguards in public pools could use this technology to yell only at specific idiots, rather than annoying everyone in the pool with their whistles and bullhorns.
Has anyone seen one of those at a museum? You stand beneath a parabolic arch and there are 2 focal points. If someone is standing in each of the focal points they can whisper to each other without anyone else being able to hear.
Also, if you go to the ruins of Chichenitza in Yucatan Mexico, you can stand in front of the pyramid and clap your hands and it comes back with a ricochet sound, but people beyond a certain angle can't hear anything but a clap..
That way I can seriously mess with somebody's head! "Ahhh, there they are again! The voices in my head!!!"
Yeah, baby. I could have so much fun with it.
Reasons not to peruse /. first thing in the morning:
I read the headline as "Targeted Sound Beans" and wondered WTF they were doing with Java now??
Remember, good boys don't put beans in their ears!
[Where did I leave my injectable caffeine??]
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
So they've found a way to make the Brown Noise only hit one person? Fantastic!! Now I won't crap my pants every time 1 million kids play it on a recorder!
Moderators: please save me from badkarmaland!
this sig has been rated E for Everyone.
Of course, in Las Vegas casinos the ceilings are absolutely covered with a/v packages to watch patrons, so the security guy mutters in a low voice 'keep gambling'. To which Ned proceeds to spend a huge wad of money.
This 5 second scene pokes fun at so many things at once, I'm always in stitches.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
they are using non-linear properties of the air to downconvert from 60kHz to the audible range. in other words, the mixer is not stable or even reproducible over a range of different air conditions like humudity, pressure, temperature, etc (fog is a good example). bottom line is, while definitely a cute idea this is not for any concert or even consumer music, the quality is simply going to be way too low. but for "crowd control" and other .mil uses this might be OK. speech might be OK too, but no music, forget about music.
This is going to be most useful for situations where you have multiple, different audio sources in the same area and don't want them to interfere. Museums and trade shows come to mind. The volume application is probably going to be point-of-sale displays.
News for Nazis. Stuff that hurts.
If Targeted Sound Beams are almost here, can Targeted Advertising Sound Beams be far behind?
Just imagine, you're walking down the street. You hear an advertisement for the strip club half a block down. You try to run away, but the sound seems to follow you. When that ad ends, you then hear the beginning of a new advertisement how to make money fast! You try crossing the street, but the sound just seems to follow you.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Imagine the PRANKS you could pull with something like this. Nothing like talking to someone in their sleep from 100 meters away while the person sleeping next to them has no clue.
:)
:)
Keep someone thinking the phone is ringing, but everytime they answer it, only a dialtone.
And ringing the doorbell and running just got a lot less risky.
Want to start a fight between two people? EASY!
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
Actually, the ITD (interaural time difference) and the IAD (interaural amplitude difference) are both involved in being able to judge the angle of origination of a sound source. The IAD is the old style of stereo effect: if it's louder on the right, the sound source is on the right, and vice versa. The interaural time difference is based on the fact that since the head is ~6 inches across and the ears are ~6-7 inches apart, with sound traveling close to ~1100 feet per second will arrive at most ~1/2000th of a second apart in the right vs. left ear. Under water, with a different speed of propagation for sound vibrations of close to ~5000 feet per second, this
difference is divided by ~4.something, so the brain which is accustomed to deciding that something is on the right or the left based on the ITD and IAD does not get enough data to be able to tell the difference. All time delays are now within 1/4th to 1/5th of all of the time delays it is accustomed to hearing and thus thinks that every noise source is coming from a cone within less than 20-30 degrees directly in front of or behind you. Nothing sounds like it is on your right or your left. (note that this is in answer to the parent post, not just the current topic).
I played with this at Bose a few years ago, and it's very disorienting at first. Pompei may have taken this further than the prototype I saw, but the version I played with essentially created audible sound coming from the point where the ultrasound beam reflected off of a surface.
It's very odd to play with one of these things. We put on a CD and started waving the ultrasound array (housed in a flashlight body) around the room. I felt disoriented pretty quickly as my brain tried to figure out where the sound it coming from.
One of the more interesting effects, as mentioned in the article, is pointing the array at someone's head and turning the volume down. Only the target can hear, because it's essentially like having a headphone on. The sound it's generating is simply too quiet to hear unless you're less than a few centimeters from the source.
My favorite application for this is car navigation systems. I like the idea of a GPS navigation system that can give spoken directions to the driver without bothering all of the passengers in the car.
Just imagine- some day these things could be as common and annoying as laser pointers. Imagine walking down the street with some teenager 200m away whispering in your ear. It's going to be ugly.
IIRC, Someone constructed a device that looked like a pair of binoculars, but had a pair of tightly focused ultrasound transducers at the front.
The device was set to emit a very narrow beam at a frequency and power that would be inaudible to people, but extremely painfull to horses.
Someone used this to try to knock a horse out of a race, and clean up on the betting.
This was several years ago I believe.
Escoutaire
When a dream dreams the dreamer, the dreams the real.
Theyre called "Low riders".
Theyre used mainly by inner-city minorities and retarded white kids who find the cul-de-sac an inappropriate place to express their blackness.
Ever get the feeling that all that bass is being used to compensate for not being held enough as children?
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag
I wonder if the same technology - using interference patterns - could be applied to put a 3000W subwoofer in the palm of your hand -- or in the armrest of you pickup truck. ;)
___ This sig is in boldface to emphasize its importance!
...but a friend of mine (studying Physical Engineering at the time) built a microwave system like this...he used 2 microwave projectors a slight distance appart, and was able to make an egg explode at a distance of 20 meters :) They used a laser-rangefinder and tweaked the amplitude to produce some wicked interferance at the target.
Good to see progress in the commercial sector... /. did an article about it....
;)
but I believe this was discovered and prototyped at the MIT media lab at least 2 years go.....
I believe
Something to do with invisible speakers
(exact same thing.. nonlinear response of sound in air, ultrasound breaknig down, etc)
currently, going to an academic tape music concert involves sitting in a room listening to sixteen channel pieces on sixteen channel sound systems (prett cool in itself). i can only imagine some of the stuff composers will come up with when they have 16 targeted audio beams at their disposal.
I had this idea once for a sound weapon. It's a little intricate but I think it should work. Say there's some neighbor who's been annoying you with loud parties or something like that. You go down to your local hispanic ghetto and hire 5 or 6 gangbangers with boom cars. They all park in front of your victim's house and tune to empty FM radio channels that you specified. You, in your car, have got a bunch of those toy wireless mikes tuned to those same channels, a laptop computer and one of those infrared eavesdroppers you can make with an IR diode, a photocell and a pair of binoculars. It shines a beam on a window pane and picks up the vibrations as people talk. So you aim this at some part of your victim's house and your laptop computes an adaptive filter to phase all the boom cars so as to maximize the vibration.
If you do this right the feedback should find the resonant frequency of what you're aiming at and shake the bejesus out of it. It would definitely break windows and might blow out walls.
Those of you sitting in rows 1-10 will be hearing the english sound track. Rows 11-20 will hear the french sound track. Those in rows 21-60 have cheap movie tickets that do not cover the RIAA music royalties and will hear the voice only sound track. Please enjoy the film.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
If so, I suppose it would have to still have a visual feedback component to remove ambiguities, just like the Ectaco product.
This was discussed two years ago on the StageCraft mailinglist, including possible uses and ramifications for the theatre.
StageCraft Thread
Yup, that's exactly what I thought of when I read the article.
I knew of this years ago. I tried to tell the nice people in white about it but they didn't listen. Wait...the voices...they're calling me again...
... a beowulf cluster of these!
(Someone had to say it)
today you are labeled crazy and institutionalized if you say you hear voices and the people around you don't.
skipping the transition, just wait till priests and ministers get ahold of these units!
Well, see, you prove it by taking a whole bunch of people and trying a wide variety of sounds at different volumes and locations and getting them to identifiy how far away the sound are.
They won't be able to. The test have been done before, though I can't tell you where right now.
Why don't we use phase shift or spectrum spread?
Because it isn't a reliable indicator of anything. Different frequencies propagate at different speeds, true, but you have to know what the sound is like at the source, and about everything in between - something we do not know reliably. Did you know that a sound coming from a source on a wooden stage will usually reverberate with more of the lows than the highs? If we depended upon sound spread for distance, it would make the sound appear closer. What about audio amplification? Using pretty much any means - electrical or acoustical - the result is a phase shift and a spreading of the sound - something you would expect if the sound is farther away. Also, due to the nature of reflection, out of phase sources that meet at a wall will only reflect their in-sync portions, confusing the distance based on phase for both of them.
What does all this show? That the interaction of sound waves with the surrounding media is so complicated that there is no way to accurately use them to guage distance with an unknown sound.
A computer may be able to tell the difference between a computer generated pulse specifically used for distancing that has traveled 1 meter and one that has traveled 100 meters, but it wouldn't be able to know the difference between a live band heard 100 meters away and one heard 1 meter away.
--From an acoustical engineer
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
The real point of this technology is that the music industry is sick of most of the public listening to music for free. One person buys a CD or turns on a radio and everyone in the area can listen to it. Even in a lift there will be several listening to music _without_paying_.
Soon every music listener will be required to wear a tracking system equipped with GPS and IDs so that they can be located and identified and every music making equipment will only be legal if it has this selective sound technology built in. This unit will identify every listener from their ID in their tracking unit and will only send them music if they are paid up on their monthly account and have their unit set on, agreeing to the terms and conditions of the music publisher and the current rates applicable to that item of music.
Everywhere from lifts to dance halls music will only be heard by those who pay the per-minute or per-title rate set by the publishers. In the home there will be one 'free' listener allowed when playing licenced CDs, with extra listeners required to pay the additional fee. This concession won't apply to MP3 players, or to old vynal or tapes as they obviously haven't paid any up-front listening fees. As a concession the equipment will allow the fee to be paid using the listeners individual account or on the house-holder's account so that parties don't penalise the guests. As an option only the nominated guests can be accounted for in this way so that gatecrashers will have to pay their own music account, or be left in silence while the party swings around them.
Acoustic instruments, such as pianos, guitars and kazoos, will be made illegal as they can play music without collecting the fees rightly due to the composers, their agents, and especially their publishers. Only electronic instruments playing through approved distribution and fee collection systems will be allowed. Composing your own music or playing music that hasn't been published by an approved publisher will also be illegal as it is obviously designed to defraud the rightfull owners of all music.
Want to learn something interesting? Look up "voice to skull" technology. I have managed to find direct evidence (via government websites) of both the United States and Austrailia researching this technology. Patents exist, and can be looked up. The technology is real, as has been known about for a few decades.
It looks like the tin-foil hat kooks may be right.
Two systems exist:
1. Audio over ultrasonic carrier - essentially uses the skull to filter the ultrasonic carrier wave - at that point it is simple bone conduction.
2. Audio over microwave carrier - this one is more "advanced" - it uses frequencies in the microwave region as the carrier wave for the sound. These waves then stimulate the vestibular region of the brain, which filter out the carrier and leave the sound information behind for the brain directly to figure out - causes strangeness to the recipient - a "voice in the head" type sensation. This form of V2S was first noticed by microwave and radar engineers who would "sense" or "hear" (in their heads) "clicks", "pops" and "whine" type noises as the worked around unsheilded microwave equipment.
Both of these technologies are real, as far as I can figure. Neither is "high quality" - but voice quality only (in fact, the microwave V2S system is actually pretty poor quality - rendering the voices in a "growling" type tone - which could be interpreted as "demons talking"). Both have potential "sinister" applications - neither have the quality of use for anything else.
I wish I was making this up - I haven't found anything that says "impossible" yet - but if someone could look into this with me, and let me know that I am wrong, I would love to see the information...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Only problem with this idea is that you'd have to be the closest to the person speaking. Sound takes time to travel mind u...
When can I buy one of these on Amazon? My neighbors dogs are going to pay for the hell I've been through the past couple of years...
Combine this with millimeter radar and you can target people inside their homes... Neighbor's kids acting like brats again? Wait till they fall asleep and start talking to them in demonic voices...
I can't wait!
What is the resonant frequency of a person's sphincter?
This tech and the frequency would make awesome crowd control.
in the future one cop will be saying to another:
"...dont worry about those protesters, they all just doookied their shorts..."
dang.
Or should it be: "Freeze, or I'll Ono you!"
I suspect the Supreme Court will ban police from using Yoko pistols due to "cruel and unusual punishment" laws.
Table-ized A.I.
I waded through the entire posting list to find an appropriate jump in point. No one has mentioned the Art Bell late night conspiracy
guy. He interviewed a person who cliamed to have first hand knowledge of he military's lates endeaver in this area. It was called something like project H A R P. It consisted of generating sound from a broad source and focusing it to the intented target, causing at a minimum disorientation, maximum deafness or stroke.
See the lyrics of Experiment IV.
Now I can carry out my plan:
1) Invest in rubber
2) Invent the "Brown note"
3) Relax
q