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Voices in Your Head
ceejayoz writes "MSNBC/Newsweek is running a story about a 'Hypersonic Sound System' that can 'can take an audio signal from virtually any source and convert it to an ultrasonic frequency that can be directed like a beam of light toward a target up to 100 yards away.' Sounds like something that advertisers will love - Minority Report just got a little closer." These guys (and the Audio Spotlight guys) have been hyping this technology for years with nothing much to show from it. But now, Newsweek promises, it's going to change the world as we hear it.
imagine how much this would freak out enemy soldiers :)
not 1st post!
My voices tell me that Linux doesn't belong on my desktop.
g to the oatse
c to the izzex
fo shizzle my nizzle fill in your own witty comment here
My only concern here is what happens when someone cranks up the amp on this and points it at someone's head at close range? Does it become a sonic bullet, destroying hearing (or worse), or is it limited in it's power by default?
The technology creats a sound wave at the point where the two ultrasonics intersect. So, if the energy of the ultrasonics were high enough, or enough ultrasonic waves intersected close to each other, this could create a huge sonic force, enough to throw someone through the air, or knock down walls. Interesting weaponry applications, eh?
Hey baby, this is your appetite speaking
</Barry White>
I've been hearing voices in my head for years now
"Picture a car where parents can listen to the Eagles while their kids wild out to Eminem in the back seat."
Picture a world where we've already invented headphones...
Voice in my head: "Hey you, wouldn't you love some nice Starbucks(TM) coffee?"
Me: "Huh, wha? Who is saying that? Get out of my head!!!"
Policeman: "Please come with me. There are some nice men in white coats that'll make it all better."
Damn its just like what the girls at Digital Teenz do when they are sucking your dick
Hopefully with sound beams will come anti-sound beams. If not... this technology might become a bit of a headache.
-Skeld
One of their 'spy' specials.
Intel agencies have been using IR and LASER beams bounced off of windows of Embassys to hear the conversations within.
--- Do you believe in the day?
This amazing device can be yours for a minimal price. Just sent me $2000 and I'll ship a couple of devices capable of producing hundreds of watts of sound. None of this crappy 1 person 100 yards away stuff.. Man, where do they get their ideas?
There needs to be legislation to block this potential weapon from the hands of advertisers. If we act now we can stop it in its infant stages, before evil corporates get a hold of the technology. Hurry....
Oh dear, A new way to spam people!!!
In one episode, the villain (Shriek) was trying to make Bruce Wayne think he was crazy by projecting the sounds to him and only him as voices in his head. The best part of the episode was Bruce explaining how he knew he wasn't hearing voices in his head to Terry (the newer Batman). He knew the voice wasn't coming from inside his head because he doesn't call himself Bruce in his thoughts.
wait, doesn't ultrasonic mean it's beyond the range of human hearing? it's difficult for advertisers to target you if you can't hear them.
$ make love
make: don't know how to make love. Stop
Woody Norris wants to tell you something--and he can put the words inside your head from 100 yards away.
Woody Norris thinks he is most clever scientist of the 21st century...but did Woody notice the yellow eyed green creature parked in a silver disk on the limbs the green tree 100 yards outside his office...
Now I can have information about increasing my penis 3 to 6 inches beamed directly into my head as I walk down the street. The very idea of pedestrian spam, spamming houses, cars, offices... give the advertisers military grade psychological warfare equipment and this will make email spam seem like well... something pretty damn trivial (drew a complete analogy blank there).
The day I get blasted with an add for Coke beamed directly into my head while walking down the street is the day I quit my job and start organizing consumer boycotts full time.
I read the article and still don't quite get how you can hear it if it is hypersonic. Does it cause your eardrum to vibrate at hypersonic speeds? If so, how do you hear this and does it cause more damage to your ears than traditional headphones? The military applications are definitely interesting to say the least.
cheat in examination with this?
This is God, Stop jacking off.
Imagine whispering words into the ears of enemy soldiers.
Soldier #1 hears "You are going to die." whispered into his ear - as if by someone standing next to him, but no one's there. He turns to Soldier #2 and says, "Oh my God, did you hear that?"
Soldier #2: "What are you talking about? I didn't hear anything."
Soldier #1 thinks he's going crazy.
They seem to miss why this may be a useful invention,
but not a revolutionizing one.
Consider where and when we have speakers today. Would the function be improved by being able to target a specific person?
Why would this technology lead to sound being used where it previously has not?
The real winner will be the engineer that develops a practical system to counter-act such a device. A small device such as a watch that can detect the signal and then send a destructive wave to cancel the signal would be good.
Scary.
I know in some areas it is illegal to have car audio systems that are too loud, I would guess this will be misused as soon as it goes mainstream. I know that is the first thing I would do with it. I can picture sitting on a park bench fsck'ing with joggers. It would be kind of freaky to have someone whisper at you standing in the middle of a field. I wonder if anyone will decide to check themselves into a mental institution based on this technology.
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.
Low volume distance. You can still hear music at a concert from the nose bleed section without killing the people in the front row.
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.
Actually, I'd like a device similar to this. How many times have you wanted to listen to some music loud, but can't disturb everyone else? I know I'd love this sucker.
For some reason I feel this is a double post, but no-one here seems to have noticed, so I must be nuts.
Here's how it works in laymans terms. I am no science wizard, but this sounds good to me..
There are things called beat frequencies that occur when you have two frequencies present. For example, if you play 20Hz into one ear, and 25Hz into the other, your brain can be 'tricked' into thinking it is hearing 5Hz (the difference between the two frequencies).
This is all well and good, but 20Hz soundwaves don't travel too good. Ultrasonic frequencies do though. Remember those TV remote controls in the 70s and 80s that used ultrasonics? You could control your neighbor's TV. (See the start of Poltergeist 1 if you forget)
But how does sending 50Khz sound waves through the air help you hear anything? Ay, well there's the rub. The concept of beat frequencies is used once again.
If you send a 50Khz sound wave from one source and pinpoint it at a certain spot, and then send a 51Khz sound wave from another source to the same spot, anyone at the place where those two beams join up will hear a 1Khz sound, thanks to beat frequencies.
That's how you can pinpoint sounds to a single place. It just took a genius to get the connection between beat frequencies and ultrasonics to work this one out. I think it's cool.
mogorific carpentry experiments
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/video_index/vide o_index.html
seems like there are a mixture of applications.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Now i guess they just need to push the arguments towards, "No, I don't want to buy a fucking Coke" and no-one will suspect a thing...
cLive ;-)
-- Trinity in high heels carrying a whip: The donimatrix - there is no spoonerism
Well they can do that already, by not having all the speakers by the stage.
I can see a few uses that would be fun....
:)
Shoplifters - Security could remind the thief that you might want some eggs to fry with that steak you shoved down your pants.
Cheating - An open window in the classroom and a friend could feed you all your answers
Drug Dealers - Hey man, 1 hit of this stuff and you will be hearing things (Hands over Bunk dope)
Shy people Dating - A good smooth talker friend could coach you with the right words.
Sporting Events - Plant a few fans in the stands to destract the players with a few choice comments.
Church - Too many possibilities to list
Military - Create a little internal strife to destabilize a country.
Pranksters will have a blast....
Hmmmmm...... I wonder if it works under water....
Now wait a minute! I thought ultrasound caused small fusion reactions to occur when sonic cavities collapsed! Rather than projecting a sound, isn't this thing going to cause people's heads to explode in a fusion reaction???
is the old Get Smart "Cone of Silence" Invent THAT!
The BBC TV show Tomorrows World had this some time ago. The idea demonstrated then was for use in night clubs, ie go on the dance floor get blasted as expected, but walk off, eg to the bar, and NO sound at all. ...er i forget its name (but any UK peep who watches enough tv should know =)
ofcource this puts a big hole in that tv add for
You know you want three. Admit it.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Ooookay. Dismissing the MKULTRA nuts just got a whole lot harder. Thanks, michael. =)
My
Limekiller
When you play two notes on, for example, the piano, it actually generates three notes: the two played notes, and the difference between the two. By using two ultrasonic sound waves, which are directional, they can make the generating waves un-hearable to the human ear, and put the difference wave nicely within the hearing range of most humans.
OK, Newsweek has now slipped into the same category as the TV channels that show infomercials 20 hours a day. A couple of weeks ago Newsweek touted Microsoft Palladium as the revolutionary future, now they're saying this sound wave thing will be. How much would it cost me to have Newsweek run a long article about my futuristic world-changing vaporware product that happens to be 8 to 15 years away from actual production? It's worse than biased media, it's buy-your-own-news.
== Paul Rickard, Editor of The Microsoft Boycott Campaign ====
Check this out - Pompei (inventor of the Audio Spotlight) exposes Norris' hype a while ago on their public stock board. Quite a thread, and includes a response from their CEO, as well as Pompei's response to him:
0 59 7&tid=atco&sid=21750597&action=m&mid=1 27
http://messages.yahoo.com/bbs?.mm=FN&board=2175
Very enlightening.!
10 demerit points for driving without helmets. For those who havnt seen his homepage http://woodynorris.com/
Siggy Say, Siggy Do
Well, I am a big home theater nut. This could have good applications if it works.
So far, we have seen things move from the old days of mono output then to stereo. Stereo is a great thing since, if the quality of the speaker and CD is excellent, then not only can the sounds be positioned in the plane of the speakers but also it can have a transparent effect of being layered from front to back. (e.g. guitar on right side, singer in the middle in front of drummer, bass on left side).
With Dolby Surround we got 4 speakers that gave us stereo fronts and two mono surround speakers. This was nice at the time because it gave 3 channels of sound (left, right, rear) but whenever an airplane came flying from rear to the front, it always felt like it came from directly the middle area behind you. It wasn't convincing.
Dolby Pro-logic gave us an added center channel with was encoded into the front stereo channels and a processor would remove it and pass it to the center. This was nice, but was added since not everyone can sit in the "sweet spot". Remember, with stereo, you can only get the right imaging of the music if you sit where both speakers are equidistant from your ears. The center channel made it so people sitting on any one side of the viewing area could feel the centered nature of dialog. This was all analog though so there would be "leakage" of channels.
Next came Dolby Digital and DTS. Both of which are 5 full range discrete channels and 1 subwoofer channel. Discrete means that each channels audio was digitally encoded so this solved the problem of "leakage" that plague Dolby Pro-Logic because the decoder chip no longer had to "guess" where the sound was supposed to go. This also brought the stereo capability to the rear channels such that pans from the rear to the front could occur more realisticly. The problem? Dolby digital and DTS are both lossy formats that sample the sound and compress it during the encoding process. This makes it possible to fit the sound track onto DVDs. DTS compresses less but there is not much difference in the way of sound quality.
With the arrival of Star Wars episode 1, we got Dolby Digital EX which has a "matrixed" center channel derived from the rear stereo speakers much like the way the front center channel was in Dolby Pro-Logic. DTS followed suit and brought their own DTS Neo:6 format with a matrixed rear channel. Now both DTS and Dolby digital provide 6.1 channels which allows a discrete rear center channel so pans are even more convincing to those who are sitting off-center. Remember, the rear stereo imaging is affected by where a person sits. If the speakers are not equidistant, then the effects are off-center as well. The rear channel fixed that.
So what's next? Well Meridian has a loss-less system called MLP which is awesome sound quality wise. DVD Audio is coming out which has a higher sampling rate so the sound quality is better (analogy: think about an MP3 encoded in 64kbps versus one encoded in 160kbps, that is to say that CDs have a twangy sound compared to the higher-resolution DVD-Audio). Lexicon/Meridian/etc. all have 7.1 and 8.1 systems either out already or they are almost their. So what will happen? We keep adding speakers to our home theaters until there is no more room to sit? If this method of projecting audio could work, then we could get rid of the clutter of speakers and amplifiers and solve the problem. What do you guys think?
This link will work better.
Here's an interesting idea. Take this technology (original excerpt here). Use it and figure out how to generate the cancellations in a spherical field, pack it into something lightweight and portable and we've got something to cancel out all the purpoted uses that American Technology Corp. has in store for you.
The Wknd Sessions - Malaysian and South East Asia independent music
already so i can't mod it up. Very very good history.
From what I understand, you can't direct sound like you can direct light. Here's why:
When you emit light, you are emitting particles. Those particles can be focused or diffused. With laser, all the particles are in near-perfect alignment. They're all going straight, as opposed to a flashlight, where the photons spread in a cone-shape fashion. But the point is, you are "creating" the medium in which your signal is being sent, and you can control the path it takes.
You cannot focus sound. There is no such thing as a sound laser. Sound is vibrations transmitted from one air particle to another, until it reaches your ear. All particle dynamics can be simplified to an image of many pyramids. You push on one particle, it pushes on two in the desired direction. They push 3. Those 3 push 4, which push 5, ad nauseam. Hypersonics can lessen the diffusion by transmitting the signal so fast that it has little time to diffuse, but if you think you can send a message from 50 feet away and only get one reciever in a crowd, I'm inclined to disagree.
We can now blind people, deafen people and "incapacitate" people. I wonder how long it will take before all of our other senses can be destroyed by 'technology'?
You got a few things right, but a few things wrong.
First, beat frequencies are quite real - there is no "tricking" your brain into hearing something that isn't there - the signal is there.
Specifically, whenever you feed 2 signals f1 and f2 into a system with any non-linearities, you will get four frequencies out - the original f1 and f2, and two new frequencies (f2-f1) and (f1+f2). So, if I feed 51kHz and 50 kHz into a system, you will get 1 kHz, 50 kHz, 51 kHz, and 101 kHz. This is the same principle that all modern radio receivers work on - it is called heterodyning, and a modern radio is a superheterodyne receiver.
Now, in terms of propagation, low frequency sound does better than high frequencies - hence why thunder goes "CRACK" when it is close and "rummmblee" when it is far away - all the high frequencies have been attenuated by the air. Also, this is one of the reasons why all you hear of the assholes with the ThunderThump 3000 car stereos is the low frequencies - what little high frequencies they produce are attenuated by the car's body and the distance.
However, to get any directionality from a sound transducer, it must be large with respect to the sound frequency. The problem is that the bulk of the frequencies humans hear have very long wavelengths - it is possible to make a directional beam of 20 Hz sound, but you would need a speaker system the size of a football field. Somewhat impractical if you want them all over the place, pumping out your "BUY ME NOW" message.
However, by translating the frequencies up to 50 kHz, you reduce the wavelengths down to the point where the speaker needn't be much larger than a paperback to get the directional gain you want. So, you upconvert the signals to ultrasonic frequencies, and you use the fact that just hitting a surface acts as a nonlinear mixing element.
However, I have always wondered how much of the signal is going into the (f2-f1) component, and how much of the power is in the other three frequencies you cannot hear? What kind of damage will this energy do over the long run?
Not to mention that, with the steady erosion of the respect of the right of people to be left alone, how will this be abused? Will we see "reality TV" shows freaking people out? (say, by beaming "LOOK OUT! HE'S GOT A GUN" to one person in a crowd). Let alone the targeted advertisments ("Hey lard butt! Yeah, YOU. Get your fat ass into Fred's Gym, across the street. NOW!")
Personally, if this sort of thing gets deployed in public places, I want to start carrying one of the boxes you used to downmix bat echolocation down to audible, locate the speakers, and use my Leatherman on them... Or my Browning...
www.eFax.com are spammers
Isn't there a risk that your head might explode if someone play's Immigrant Song by Led Zeppelin?
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
This is just a guess. Ultrasonic frequencies are greater than that that a human can hear. Higher frequencies also mean shorter wavelengths. This means that the sound source (e.g., transducer) can be equivalently smaller. One can then make a planar array of transducers that can be used to directional focus a beam of acoustic energy in a preferential azimuth. For instance, an Aegis cruiser's main radar array is a planar array.
But how does one then "hear" the signal in this directional acoustic signal. As others have pointed out there is something called the beating frequency when two signals interact. I would therefore have to surmise that the array contains two sets of arrays to transmit two different signals/ultrasonic frequencies. This might explain why he has problems at lower frequencies. The signals need to be closer in their frequency signal, which will also cause problems in the directional beam-forming.
Wish I could think about this a bit more, but I have to print a bunch of stuff right now.
"No, I'm the geek behind the hunk you thought was talking to you. I'm beaming my voice around him with HyperSound!"
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
Now when I tell the doctors that the ogvernment is beaming the voices into my head, maybe they'll actually believe me!
It's very special, because, as you can see--the numbers all go to 11. Right across the board. Eleven, 11. . . . And most amps go up to 10? Exactly. Does that mean it's louder? Is it any louder? Well, it's one louder, isn't it? It's not 10. You see, most blokes are going to be playing at 10--you're on 10 on your guitar, where can you go from there? Where? I don't know. Nowhere! Exactly! What we do, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do? You put it up to 11. Eleven. Exactly. One louder. Why don't you just make 10 louder, and make 10 be the top number, and make that a little louder?
Spinal Tap was great.
one is marketing. How warm and fuzzy.
I wonder what happens if one cranks up the power?
Is that like the poodle in the microwave?
I suppose taking actions to defeat someone's
ability to use these things on you will mark
you as a terrorist. That will be supported by
judges noting that such use by marketers is
protected "Free Speech".
Yes, boss, I'm a damn fool; I know you wanted
that hole over there.
It won't feel like it's comming from inside your head anymore than anysound wave does.
It's still sound, not telepathy.
It turns out that "Field of Dreams" was military testing of this sound system and holographic projection systems.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
Here is an rare drawing of the initial design...
Good.. Can you hear me now?..Good..
Sound to me like codec, from metal gear solid(tm).
I recall that this technology has also been explored by the military. Last I heard, it was to be used to confuse troops on the other side -- "what's that noise", "where's that coming from?" , and so on.
And they have been saying I'm crazy for wearing this tinfoil-wrapped colonder on my head! We'll see who is crazy now!
I really hope noone mutters "Muad'Dib" near onna them things ;)
I can see it now... kill yourself...kill yourself...turn the wheel of youre car hard right...NOW!
sarcasm
/sarcasm
Wow beaming sound from one location to another. That was something Marconi could have only dreamed of!
C'mon Please please refrain from hawking LNUX shares. Remember, as stated on Forbes.com ' VA is not a Linux company '.
You start shining lights in my eyes and beaming annoying sounds at me and I'll show you just how good my aim with this Glock is. Thank God we can carry sidearms in Texas easily.
That scene in Real Genius...You know... ... ...
Mitch: And from now on, stop playing with yourself!
Kent: It is God!
Did you ever see the video of the bridge swinging up and down and eventually collapsing due the wind having the right resonant frequency? Could this be using to cause structural damage to bridges, buildings, etc?
Our local Ralphs supermarket recently installed flat-panel LCD screens on every register to show advertising to the people waiting in line to check out. Video I can tune out, you simply look away, but they added audio. You can't not pay attention to audio, which is why I am now boycotting Ralphs. I still think consumer boycots are the best way to go. Here's my boycot list:
Shell - Bastards wouldn't let me use their bathroom because they close them at 10pm.
Arco - Deceptive pricing, $0.35 if you use an ATM card, noted in very small print on the pump.
TNN - Put a black bar that blocks content without adding anything extra.
Movies on TV - "Edited for Time", removing content to put in commercials or fit a schedule.
What else do people boycot?
Travis
"Warning: through sound and motion you might accidently paralyse nerves, shatter bones, set fires, suffocate an enemy or burst his organs."
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
My Blog: http://nic.dreamhost.com/
...generating voices in my head, or in the head of anybody in the vicinity. Great, just what I need, my dog begging me to take him to the Gap.
It won't feel like it's comming from inside your head anymore than anysound wave does.
Quoth the article: "What the person across the room hears is, well, unbelievable: all of a sudden, the sound of a waterfall has materialized in his head."
I'm not sure how the technology works (they don't give much actual detail about it) but it may be vibrating the skull, which would make it sound like it's coming from inside your head. (I have a Thinkgeek "Soundbug" and if you push it against your forehead, you hear it from between your ears - very weird!)
Oldest story where they used the same mechanism (modulating an audio signal onto an ultrasonic frequency and sending it to people) is a story by L. Spague de Camp, _The Exalted_, first published in 1940. (Fun story, by the way; my copy is from _The Astounding Science Fiction Anthology_, edited by John Campbell, Simon And Schuster. Publication date is roughly 1952.)
"There's the soft-speaker, for instance-"
"What's that?"
"It's like a loud-speaker, only it doesn't speak loudly. It throws a super-sonic beam, modulated by the human voice to give the effect of audible sound-frequencies when it hits the human ear. Since you can throw a supersonic beam almost as accurately as you can throw a light beam, you can turn a soft-speaker on a person, who will then hear a still small voice in his ear apparently coming from nowhere..."
"'Tis great confidence in a friend to tell him your faults, greater to tell him his." --Poor Richard's Almanac
Microsoft will probably buy the technology and change its name from Direct Sound to DirectSound LOL!
Now that's +1 Insightful!
--
SweetAndSourJesus
my nuts smell fantastic tonight
Just wait until the kiddies get their hands on one of these.
Cinemas are going to need metal detectors to prevent the influx of highly irritating and disruptive gadgets - mobile phones, pen lasers, pen speakers - otherwise it's going to be their downfall.
I think this would be really handy for home theater setups. Most of the places I've lived just aren't set up right to have proper surround sound. The rear speakers just don't really have any place to go, and even if they did, the wires would be really obnoxious. Often times the front left and right speakers can't be pushed out far enough to really give the proper seperation, either.
But, by using this technology, all you'd have to do is point these high-freq speakers at the spots from which you want the sound to come and *poof* you've got a virtual-speaker there.
They're saying that there are issues with reproducing bass signals, but that's where your subwoofer comes in. Now, that is often the uglies part of the system.. big and bulky, but if you could find somewhere for that to go, then that should make up for the lack of bass from the high-freq speakers. Sort of like those Bose systems with the little satelite speakers and the sub. Together, the system sounds really good.. but unplug the sub? It's not a pretty sound..
I think we can all agree that foil hats are a fashion statement long in coming. :-)
Stop the Slashdot Effect! Don't read the articles!
"Picture a car where parents can listen to the Eagles while their kids wild out to Eminem in the back seat."
By the time this thing enters mass production, I seriously doubt many "parents" will be old enough to be Eagles fans. Furthermore, if you let your "kids" (and I mean real kids) listen to Eminem, you're a terrible parent.
Remember, even though a tech is ready for prime time, the suits still need time to make lame commercials (that I see every single commercial break), establish "corporate partnerships", and find a way to make the financials look good regardless of how well the product actually sells.
"Saddam Hussein cavorts with terrorists."
That's the quickest way to get these dick-heads to leave you hanging on the phone. Just tell 'em you're broke.
You don't even get a chance to start a sob story about it either. They figure they'rte going to give you the same warm welcome they've been getting all day and they slam the phone in your ear.
Its great. Word gets around and they don't call anmore.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Use Google like we always do. Read the past. Shouldn't we be even more concerned; the older Slashdotters have heard this as "secret plans" before. It is now just allowed by private industry instead of other, er, organizations. Time for my lead helmet with the nice LEDs... ;)
Inside a car the signal can bounce off the backseat... even if its directed. There is no way one can have two sets of directed speakers in a car even if the concept of "directed speakers" is possible.
Whats next ? Directed Sound blackholes ?
rkt
Pity dissent in this country!
Oh, whoo-hoo. I've got something that has your invention beat by a mile--it can braodcast to millions of listeners all over the country, perhaps even the world! It's called a radio, see, and. . .
This could create a whole new use for tinfoil hats.
Let me know when you want some help.
Also, if I send a 10KHz sine wave straight into somebody's head at 170dB SPL, I don't think they're going to be able to do much until I turn it off. They'll probably be partially deaf, too, at least for a little while.
Sorry, but if you actually TRY the noise-cancelling headphones you'll quickly discover that they don't work so well on high-frequency content. They're mainly intended to help damp out the rumbling of jet engines inside an airplane cabin. You can still clearly hear human speech.
The problem is that to accurately cancel a sound, you have to EXACTLY invert its phase - match it and you double the volume instead. Bass is a lower frequency with a longer wavelength and is easier to accurately match and thus cancel. You can measure the sound with a microphone a small distance from the ear canal, without causing much problem. But the high frequency sound is more directional, and you'd have to mount the microphone which measures the sound to be canceled almost directly in the ear canal to get a real measurement of what you need to be canceling. Not exactly comfortable to wear, or convenient.
As electronics get smaller, I wouldn't be surprised to see active cancellation hearing-aid-style inserts. This method would probably work perfectly. As a matter of fact, the only real high-end noise cancelling system used something like that setup, with a remote electronics pack.
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
QSound was supposed to do this, cause vibrations in the auditory system to make the sound seem like it was coming from inside you and around you. I don't know how well it worked because the only time I saw anything with the QSound label it was in an arcade and everything just ran together in one huge cacophony.
BrainWave Generator is pretty cool for playing with binaural beats, or at least making weird sounds come out of your computer. And some of the presets do seem to put me in an interesting state of mind.
The potential for abuse of this device is overwhelming.
First listed use of this device was for the military... why not use it for toys? You know the toys that make all kinds of annoying noise when your toddler plays with them? It would be nice if it was the child alone that was "entertained" by incessant peizo-buzzer quality nursery rhymes.
"I'll have a positivly scathing retort in twenty minits!"
But I would consider any use of this on me without my explicit permission (in a public space, in a store, etc.) to be an assault.
but anyway... i'm reminded of this eerie scene from a well known sci-fi novel:
Trumpets blared.
"Denham's Dentrifice."
Shut up, thought Montag. Consider the lilies of the field.
"Denham's Dentifrice."
They toil not-
"Denham's--"
Consider the lilies of the field, shut up, shut up.
"Dentifrice ! "
He tore the book open and flicked the pages and felt them as if he were blind, he picked at the shape of the individual letters, not blinking.
"Denham's. Spelled : D-E.N "
They toil not, neither do they . . .
A fierce whisper of hot sand through empty sieve.
"Denham's does it!"
Consider the lilies, the lilies, the lilies...
"Denham's dental detergent."
"Shut up, shut up, shut up!" It was a plea, a cry so terrible that Montag found himself on his feet, the shocked inhabitants of the loud car staring, moving back from this man with the insane, gorged face, the gibbering, dry mouth, the flapping book in his fist.
This will no doubt comprise the superliminal branch of their three-pronged attack.
Listen to mono sound on some in ear headphones and try to localize the sound ... having a sound-source projected all around your head (which would happen if the two ultrasonic beams converged on your head) will give you the same sort of feeling.
qsound is mostly just varying amounts of inversion on one side of a stereo channel. If you happen to be in the sweet spot it sounds kinda like its coming from inside your head. There were some qsound demos that came with the SB AWE32 years ago. The kind of stuff you play with for a minute or two and think 'I can't believe they are trying to sell this crap.'
It's not gonna look nearly as badass when you're watching a bunch of people slam into each other and you can't even hear what's driving them to do it.
And how stupid are the bands playing live and in concert gonna look when you can't hear what the hell they're playing? My God... it will be like a world mimes!
This settles it: down with technology!
"But the cars are all flashing me, bright lights are passing me, I feel life passing me by" - Stiff Little Fingers
Glen: "I wish to God that somebody would do something to block out the voices in my head for five minutes. Voices that scream over and over; 'Why do they come to me to die? Why do they come to me to die?"
Wayne: "Okay..."
As they so often are, /.'s summary of the article is ambiguous where it matters most. You can shoot an ultrasonic signal at my head, but will I hear it? Is that what the article is about?
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
I saw a circuit diagram to do this based on single sideband modulating the audio signal at 20KHz and mixing with a sine wave 20KHz generated with tweeters.
The book called the circuit a "selective shouter", I saw this in a red hardback book in the library of the Queen Elizabeth I Sixth Form College, Leicester in 1989. I since went back to track down the book but can't find any trace of it.
Sam
blog.sam.liddicott.com
Will my aluminium foil helmet still block the evil beams?
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
How to deal with neighbours across the road who play loud music until the wee small hours? Wait until they're asleep and then use this handy gizmo to exact a targetted revenge without disturbing any of the other neighbours!
God I'd have fun saying that to people as they're walking down the street.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
There are some riot control devices that look like a cannon. They essentially consist of a massive multi-kilowatt power amplifier that is used to fire 10hz tones (lower limit of human hearing is around 20hz) at the crowds. "Loud" enough sound at 10 hz is enough to knock people over and make them lose control of their bowels.
I imagine this could easily be used to 'beam' a low tone like this at someone specific (a hostage taker, etc) and make them incapacitated without any harm to others in the area.
to beam "helpful suggestions" to drivers in front of me that are driving like idiots...
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
It doesn't appear that anyone's brought up the inevitable privacy issues. Unsolicited intrusions into your person most certainly constitute an invasion of privacy at the least, physical assault at the worst. with a tv, you pay for the service and have the option of turning it off. with this, it's forced upon you and it doesn't really appear to have a turn off option.
i'd really like to be the first person this is used on commercially. i'd retire a very rich man.
Ooh, the dogs aren't going to like this one bit.
I've always wondered what would happen if someone mounted a magnetron from a microwave onto a tripod and followed someone down the street in the cross-hairs.
What would happen if someone turned up the volume on this thing - could they damage someones ears? what if, a small group of terrorists played tapes of gun-shot sounds and pointed each machine at a secret-service agent who was pretecting the president. They could confuse each agent into thinking shots were coming from different locations, and maybe also disruppt their communications (its hard to listen to an earpeice when theres allot of noise around lol). What if, i became fed-up with people sticking these things on me as i walked down the street so i wore a device that would retransmit it back at 100 times the power? Maybe advertisers will use automatic transmitters that lock onto individual people - will there be a legal difference between doing that, or just setting up a field around the area infront of their shop etc. What if someone points it at someone elses shop pursuading customers that the shop they're about to walk into is going to overcharge them - Will we have major sound wars?
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Have a look at this article.. this was reported in December 1999. Tommorow's World demonstrated it really well; a dancefloor thats loud, but once you leave it, near silence. Also they should fun practical jokes - whisper in somebody's ear from hundreds of yards away.
v ol utioninsound.shtml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/tw/items/991229_re
Graham.
so THATS where they were coming from. And I thought I was crazy! It was just beta testing...
As soon as someone shoots one of these things at you, just pull out yours and fire it right back at him only reamplified =)
Hello, this is Dr. Pompei. I thought you would be interested in reading my letter to the Newsweek editors:
? cp1=1 to appear in Newsweek, August
(Regarding story "Hearing is Believing",
http://www.msnbc.com/news/786016.asp
5th printed issue.)
The authors of "Hearing is Believing" achieved their apparent objective of presenting an entertaining portrait of Mr. Norris, but have failed their readers by not researching their subject more thoroughly. If they attempted to contact actual users of the technology (both mine and his) more than one day before their publication date, they might have had time to report more facts rather than Norris' fantasy.
For example, the authors might have learned that there does not appear to be a single, public installation of HSS anywhere in the world. However dozens of top museums, corporations, and venues have purchased and have been using Audio Spotlights for years. Also, they might have learned that about all that Norris seems to have invented in this field is the HSS name, since he essentially copied basic technology developed by competent researchers in the 1980's. After spending $30 million of other people's money, he has little improvement and no evidence of salable product to show for it. In contrast, I spent less than 0.3% of that as a Ph.D. student at MIT and have a fully functional system being sold and delivered to major companies and museums around the world.
(listed on the website below)
In these times of increased scrutiny of the honesty of CEO's, it is unfortunate that the authors did not take the time to fully investigate
claims made by would-be innovators, particularly those whose primary goal in garnering such publicity seems to be raising money from the
public. Surely, your readers deserve the whole story.
Dr. F. Joseph Pompei
Holosonic Research Labs, Inc.
www.audiospotlight.com
As the headline of the story says, check out Audio Spotlight from MIT. I was lucky enough to see Joseph Pompei (the inventor of Audio Spotlight) give a demonstration and it was amazing. The technology works as promised: it produces a directed beam of sound which can make noises come from anywhere in the room you want. Furthermore, Mr. Pompei struck me as an exceptionally competent researcher. He had looked at a lot of issues like what kind of frequency response you can get (bass is harder to get than treble), whether the ultrasound causes long term damage (not according to a Harvard study), and how to manufacture (short answer: lots of DSP chips).
I don't new about the guy Newsweek talks about, but the technology is real and I'm looking forward to hearing it.
at 10hz those waves are 33 metres long.
People hearing voices in their head? Wow talk about old news, they used to burn people for that kind of thing..... Though I have to admit, making a product you can sell based on this is pretty slick (well aside from whoever makes boatloads of money from things like Thorazine).
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
If you want to humiliate someone or win a great battle against indiscriminate or aggressive advertizing, try addressing yourself to the book company. The $8-an-hour clerk isn't responsible. Neither are the poor high school dropouts trying to sell you long distance service. Ask for a manager, and then explain to the manager that "suggestive selling" the membership was intrusive.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
The computer interfaces and the customized advertizing thing were the worst offenders. In the future, people will use computer interfaces so jerky and bewildering that nobody else can follow anything they're doing. They will then, inexplicably, display those interfaces on a really big screen so others can stand around wondering what the heck they're doing. Shopping in stores will become so intrusive that everyone will stagger from store to store, dodging the customized messages flung in their direction. Wouldn't it be more like "Choose your custom background music while you're shopping here"? The good folks at Muzak would be more imaginative with something like this than the "futurists" who consulted on the film. Or maybe you could get prices, or combination deals based on what you were looking at... you think?
Pop culture has some pretty backward ideas about how to design around new technologies. Maybe it's right, too; let me know when someone designs a decent alarm clock.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Wow, devices that beam sound directly at me used for advertising... in the past vandalism on billboards were pretty amusing, if not unsightly. If people start to vadalize these devices, say by cracking them with bats so we dont have to hear any unwanted advertisements, Id say vandalism will have taken on a new role, going from destructive to useful.
I have a stereo with Qsound built in, not sure what it was supposed to do originally, but it does do a good job at making the sound appear to NOT be coming from the center of the tapedeck (the midpoint between the speakers) so i leave it turned on rather than off.
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
in my head tell me to quench my thirst with Sprite!
See, it _was_ that goddamn dog telling him to do it after all! How fast until we see an appeal?
For all you little kids and non-US types, the Son of Sam was a serial killer who said his dog was telling him to commit the murders (back in the late 70's I think it was.....hell I was just a kid, I can't remember exact dates).
WTF? Over?
researcher Joseph Pompei, who's developed a rival product under the name Audio Spotlight (automaker DaimlerChrysler is evaluating it in some concept cars) and accuses Norris of everything from taking credit for the work of others to dubious business practices, all of which Norris denies. "For over a decade, [Norris has] promoted impressive-sounding technology of which he has very little evidence of real understanding
Oh, now I see why the article implied that Norris is a modern day Edison.
This type of concept has existed for years in the architectural field (e.g. the Oval Office). What a challenge it must have been for a physicist to find a way to use focal points, angles of reflection and arc curvatures. Just a new twist on something old, hardly a paradigm shift. It even has a counterpart in the microphone that looks like a giant contact lens on the sidelines of sporting events.
After hearing about HSS technology, Jack Valenti ordered his employee, Senator Foghorn Hollings, to a introduce a bill requiring all Americans to carry a 50-pound *AA DRM filter unit around in a back-pack. The bill is expected to pass unanimously as soon as the checks clear.
They tried that on Roger Waters CD `amused to death`.
"If the dog at the start doesnt sound like he`s barking in your neighbours garden, then your speakers may be out of phase"
Yeah, either that or i wasnt in the room when the Qsound salesdroids managed to sell their shoddy, worthless piece of crap to a coked up hasbeen and thus am precluded from the placebo effect.
Are you sure you have a stereo, and not just a mono? Qsounds supposed to make things sound like they are not somewhere between your speakers, but are in fact further away. Of course, it doesnt work, because its impossible. But dont tell any of the record companies that pay out for this stuff.
For those who are interested in things such as white papers on the technology, go to American Technology Corp. website. I used to work there... the article does not do it justice.
Yoda of Borg am I! Assimilated shall you be! Futile resistance is, hmm?
maybe it can be hacked to make one of those nifty ultrasonic guns! CAn YOU HeAr ME NOWWW!
Several years ago, I was seeing a shrink who had me take the MMPI. Back then, the test asked multiple questions about hearing voices in your head, including the true/false statement: "I hear a voice in my head." I made the mistake of answering 'true' to this (I hear my own voice in my head all the time, don't you?) and spent months being asked questions like "Do you feel compelled to drive your car off a bridge because the voices in your head tell you to?"
Soon the shrinks can ask "Did you spend all your money/sacrifice your sister's pet gerbil/go postal because the voices in your head told you to?" and how the heck are the shrinks gonna know whether the voices are organic or mechanical? Time to buy stock in GlaxoSmithKline...
Denver Isuzu Suzuki
???well, which is it?
Since its a "tight" beam, close range and long range will have about the same intensity since the signal is not dispersing with distance (or is dispersing slowly). So being close is probably not a great danger than being a medium distance. On the otherhand if the dominant loss mechnism is absorption in the air rather than dispersion then to reach ultra-long ranges a high intensity beam could be used and that would of course be dangerous close in.
Yes you are 100% correct. Ultrasonification can be very dangerous to living matter. One could argue that the energies involved might be small since the erar is sensitive. But the counter argument is that this device is 100% based on the fact that the ultrasonic energy is creating a non-linear response inside your head that is causing you to hear the audio-frequeny beat frequency. Almost by definition a non-linear response by an otherwise hisgly linear system requires a strong stimulous. Thus the ultra sonics energy is really affecting your body in an abnormal way. presumably it does not have enough energy to cook the proteins in your body or directly burst cells. But maybe for example it could make cells temporarily more porous, disrupting their ionic balances, allow free radical intrusion which long term could promote eventual cell death, cancer or infection. These would be very very rare events spread out over very long time, be hard to detect and prove cause and effect.
I remember coming across a company that sold these weird speaker dome type things. It looked like a dome (about 2 feet wide), with a odd looking speaker driver on top of it. They were marketing them to vending corporations (ATM's) and to companies that rent convention space. They didn't seem nearly as scientific as these speaker panels, but they claimed that there was very little sound that bleed outward. PS: I recently saw a company on Fox News Chicago being interviewed with this type of supersonic speaker. Not sure what company it was, but they said they were working on marketing the product to the military for use in the battlefield. They briefly said something about a tricked out one that could kill a person on sight, as well as a handheld version with a collection of the worlds most annoying sounds (a baby crying...backwards).
Only the meek get pinched. The bold survive.
Well, it sort of does that, it depends on what you're listening to--with radio it's largely unnoticable, except for a slight boost in volume, but with CDs, esp. live recordings there's a nice difference, it sounds as if it's coming from about a bit behind the speakers, and spread out to the left and right, as an actual band would be set up
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
The sources of those are easier to detect though.
Sure. Tell that to anyone who's ever listened to a Magneplanar, Ohm-F, Bose-901, or full-range electrostatic speaker. All are full-range, single element speakers (OK, the Bose 901 has nine identical full range elements). All have been around for decades.
Is the rest of this article up to the same high standards of careful journalistic research?
The article mentioned that he was using a pair of ultrasonic beams, so it was my assumption that he was focusing the two beams on the person's head and that the person was hearing the "beat frequency" of the two beams.
(but not from Bill's humidor...)
Correct - what I was alluding to was being able to hear the original ultrasound before the mixing, so as to better locate the speakers.
And I'm not sure if the bat boxes do a single-sideband on the signal - I think they just do a straight mix of a bandwidth limited input - the mike responds to 20kHz->40 kHz, and then you mix with 20 kHz, yeilding 0->20 kHz and 40->60 kHz. Who cares about the high-side signals?
www.eFax.com are spammers
Imagine every coke machine was a dog whistle! Poor Lassie!
This sounds like a very evil piece of technology, I hope somebody is priming their time machine to go back a few years to take this guy out. All you'll need is a coke machine (yeh.. right.. terminator two was wrong, real life killer machines are so much more uncool than Arnie)
Google on "Voice to Skull" technology - and be afraid...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Sounds like something out of the great Sci-Fi series The Reality Dysfunction (Peter F. Hamilton).
:) The "HyperSonic MultiMedia System" is next perhaps???
Only that was directed video and audio
I understand what they're saying and find it very enlightening. Thank you Slashdot, for this great information.
ok - this audio beam inspired me to expand on the predictions a bit... show the potential for good, and evil... Voices in my Head: A Paid Presentation Have you ever tried listening to 2 notes at the same time using headphones - 1 note in the right ear and 1 in the left? If you have, you'd know that with both headphones on at once, the sounds overlap in your head and you can only hear 1 note, at a pitch exactly between the actual 2 notes coming out of the headphones. In this case it's your brain integrating & re-interpreting signals - but now two companies are taking this premise and turning it into products. The idea is this: take two super-high frequencies of sound (beyond human hearing range) and pump them out - high frequencies have very small wavelengths and so the sound is very concentrated, more like a beam than a wave. When these two frequencies hit each other, the overlapping parts cancel each other out, and you only hear the difference between the two (called Tartini Tones). Now, regular music and voices are just a series of frequencies we hear through the air... so Norris' idea was to take any audio source, like a microphone, or stereo and reverse-engineer the frequency from say 440 Hz to two separate ultra-sonic frequencies (say 20,000 Hz and 20,440 Hz) and then to re-broadcast those two separate frequencies - and this is the cool part - when re-broadcast, they are in their focused, concentrated, narrow wavelength form which is "directable" like a beam of light. **Only the person you are shining this beam on can hear the sound** As you can imagine, this has wild implications. Some of the best of which include the ability to do things like have 4 bands playing at 1 club, and you just have to stand under the "audio beam" of the band you want to hear - the others will be silent to you, or at least as quiet as their un-amplified instruments. At the less social end of this spectrum are niceties such as separate audio channels for each passenger in a minivan - without the need for headphones. The dashboard and back of each seat could broadcast an audio-beam into the head of the person facing it, and no one else would hear that audio. This could be a boon for the radio-tuner industry as a need would arise for tuners capable of receiving multiple stations at once to ensure maximum listener pleasure. That's all very nice and mundane, but doesn't seem very profitable. Well, everything's profitable when the military gets involved, and this is one technology they are very interested in. Diversion is a tried and true tactic, and audio beam technology will enable them to project the sound of a large platoon approaching the left side of a city - while simultaneously deploying troops to right side. They could theoretically do tricks such as cut a phoneline, and beam their audio feed to your head - making you believe that you were still talking with your trusted friend, while in fact is was a pre-fab military soundtrack, or voice actor. Even more frightening than that though is that audio beam technology will allow them to broadcast ear-piercing sounds into the heads of their enemies mid-battle, while sparing the ears of allies. Hard to fight when your eardrums feel like they're about to burst. Luckily most of us are not wanted by the military; unluckily, we are all wanted by many other entities. Imaging you are walking down the street on a beautiful sunny day, and all of a sudden, out of nowhere you hear "chssk - gulp, gulp - ahhhh, that ice cold Coca Cola sure was refreshing - want one?" You stop and look around, but no one's there. No, wait - there is a coke machine about 50 yards in front of you... and it has an audio beam on it. Bastards. You keep walking down the street, past lingerie stores where then mannequins somehow talk to you through the glass, into the mall where every square foot of floorspace has now been sold to audio advertisers. Every step you take makes you the next victim of an aural advertisement - beamed directly from Disney into your head! Who owns what you hear? Who gets to decide? The Opera browser lets us turn off javascript pop-up ads, but how can we turn off audio beams whose messages penetrate our very minds? This technology has some devastating potential from a "rights management" perspective - all we have to do is twist the words of a few recent music and movie industry pundits to see the future - "By coming into our mall in the first place, consumers are implicitly agreeing to have our advertising beamed into their heads. How else are we supposed to survive as corporate entities if they are allowed to wear audio-beam prevention devices? These should be made illegal in capitalist spaces as they prevent the generation of revenue from audio beams. We must be allowed into people's heads." The only way we'll be safe from this is for legislation to be put into place banning the broadcast of unsolicited audio materials from any focusable audio source. If this is not done before the technology becomes widespread we *will* be hearing arguments exactly like the one above, and we may lose the right to decide whose voices live inside our own heads. by Derek Martin --------------- Some of the companies already using these audio-beam technologies include: Alma Media American Greetings British Airways British Telecom Creative Labs Daimler Chrysler Eastman Kodak General Motors Hewlett-Packard Jack Morton Worldwide Johnson & Johnson Kaiser Permanente Kraft Foods Marks & Spencer Motorola Newseum NCR Corporation Orange Procter & Gamble SEGA Steelcase Symbol Technologies Time Warner Toyota Walt Disney Imagineering ACMI at Federation Square PGA European Tour, 2002 Adelaide Festival, 2002 Australia American Loudspeaker Manufacturer's Assoc. Audio Engineering Society Boston Museum of Science List Visual Arts Centre, Boston, MA Northwestern University Media Lab Europe, Dublin, Ireland Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC Sega Joypolis, Tokyo Japan Symphony Hall, Boston, MA Potomac Institute, Arlington, Virginia Thomson, Dolby, and Harman Sources: http://www.discover.com/awards/arc97/9707-7G.html http://www.locationsound.com/96winter/hyper.html http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/08/27/151022 5&tid=141
http://www.msnbc.com/news/786016.asp
http://www.elwoodnorris.com/interview.htm
geeks are cats who dig a certain kind of cool