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Directed Sound
yawningyellowyak writes "Technology Review has an interesting article on directed sound. Ultrasonic 'sound' is sent out from a 'speaker' and the distortion encountered on hitting the air produces hearable sound, but only in certain spots. You could be standing right next to someone and they would hear nothing.
One step closer to the cone of silence!"
This tech is the very definition of vapourware, it's been in development for years.
One step closer to the cone of silence!
Damn. I'm still grappling with the unmistakable cone of ignorance
standing right next to someone and they would hear nothing
That would be great if someone could rig my wife up with one of these... the silence would be bliss! :)
Now if they can project "burnt toast smell" I'll really be able to make people think they're nuts.
from like over a year or so ago.
-Polyhead-
At last - high volume p0rn without waking up my girlfriend!!!
And we think spam is bad...
I don't see how this is anything new. I saw a show on TechTV about a year ago where some guy had perfected what most other companies had given up on (he is an inventor and has come up with a lot of other tech things). What he perfected was a speaker which could be totally directional and was completely flat. Some of the applications he considered were having them installed in a vending machine. For example, you could hear the sound of coke being poured into a glass - fizzing, glub glub glubbing, ice clanking as the soda fills the glass - that would only be audible if you were directly in front of the vending machine but step aside and you would not be able to hear anything at all.
Can you imagine how this could be used to really screw with peoples heads?
..."
On the edge psycho person: "Hey, did you hear that voice"
Unknowing friend: "No, I didn't hear anything"
On the edge psycho person: "Quit messing with me man, I can hear that voice a clear as day"
Unknowing friend: "I told you, all I hear is some elevator music"
On the edge psycho person: "AAARGH, get it out of my head, it's telling me to, to, to
Unknowing friend: "TO WHAT, TO WHAT!?!"
On the edge psycho person: "GO TO AISLE 4 FOR A 2 FOR 1 ON LIGHT DAYS! AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH"
All kidding aside, there actually is a fair bit of harm one could use this tech for. Make the "sound" of high enough intensity, and it would make a very effective, and undetectable weapon.
But I doubt the car owners would want it. Why have a loud sound system in a car if the whole world can't hear (and know about) it.
Has anyone ever been into into the Lucas Sound Studio at MGM in Disney world? I believe it's co sponsored by AT&T.
* There's something similar to this. You put on headphones.
* You're in a booth about the size of a small 1/2 bathroom.
*It goes completely dark, but you are told to close your eyes for an even better effect.
You then proceed to "become a CEO" for a day of a Fortune 500 company - you get your hair cut and blowdried in the boardroom - you CAN FEEL the scissors and hear them close to your ears and atop your head. Then you can FEEL HEAT from the blowdryer - and it's nothing but sound rather an auditory/perceptual illusion.
Imagine if this could be done with the directory sound.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
which was a dupe of this one from July 2002!
produces hearable sound, but only in certain spots
I bet that as soon as this goes into production, it will be abused in one way or another, like cookies that were ment to show us advertisement thatwe REALY were interested in and databases with emailadresses that would only send us mail that would give us offers we want.
Instead of you hearing something and me hearing nothing, it will be that we all hear everything.
It might be very interesting and I still think if you do not want to hear something, just turn the sound off. Also now at least you know people are talking on their cell phones. Soon that will be impossible, as the sound will be pointed directly to the persons ear.
Mmmm. That even might be usefull. Next imagine a microphone that works the same way and we can walk around and nobody knows that I am talking to myself, again.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
its been around some time:
word spy
how stuff works
For us engineery/hackery types it'll actually be kind of an adventure. It'll be an arms race between our noise-cancellation technology and the advertisers' ever more advanced yap-up technology.
Or, we can just wear headphones to drown out the idiocy . . . .
Only in a Slashdot fantasy can a Slackware install turn into several hours of sex . . . . .
"One step closer to the cone of silence!"
"Uh.... what was that, Chief?"
"We are focused on achieving high volume applications featuring the unique benefits of HSS directed sound. --"To the Shareholders of American Technology Corp." Business Wire, March 25, 2002
I think that the problem with spam isn't just how irritating it is, but also how difficult it is to get rid of. We're bombarded by it every day. This technology (in the short term at least)requires a physical presence of the 'spamming' hardware to point the sound at you. It could easily be spotted and sorted out on an individual case.
Seriously, marketers will be in heaven, able to target ads at passerbys. Now you can look forward to being inundated with directed sound ads while walking the street. It'll be far more annoying because it'll be harder to ignore than ambient noise (ads running on outside speakers, people hawking their businesses on the sidewalk).
And we think spam is bad...
Maybe they should have come out with Directed Smell first.
Microsoft did it years ago already, with DirectSound! Or am I missing something ;-)
"Arrrgh, My ears...the earplugs do nothing!"
from here and here.
i'm sure this'll come around again in the next few months...
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
This kind of technology (although not as refined as mentioned in the article) has been in use for quite some time. For example, in Oslo Lufthavn (Oslo/Norway international airport) there are "quiet spots" where a speaker is used in combination with a parabole to create "sound spots" in the airport lounge area. The sound (sea waves, bird song, etc.) is basically only audible to the person standing directly under the speaker/parabole.
SIG: TAKE OFF EVERY 'CAPTAIN'!!
Previous story is here
Not difficult to find from July 2002.
wot no sig
Does anyone have an info/links on how this works?
I'd hazard a wild guess that an ultrasound carrier is amplitude modulated with audio frequencies and that the ear drum and associated structure acts like a demodulator and low-pass filter. I'd also be interested to know if it works at one of the industry standard ultrasonic transducer resonant frequencies (IE 40kHz).
biopowered.co.uk - catalytically cracking triglycerides for home automotive use since 2008. Just say no to big oil!
I regretably entered a competition for a favour to someone, about innovations and technology. This incorporated directing personal advertising on hoardings which can be activated by someones mobile device! Personally I had to write the proposal with enthusiasm, but we all know it would never work!! People would hate the spam personal advertising, with pictures, let alone sound that u cannot ignore!
This same technolodgy was mentioned in popular science half a year ago, and had the guys name who developed it and everything.
It works by directing sounds onto an object via the air
When the waves hit your skin, you hear sound, but the waves are projected in a single direction, like a lazer beam, instead of projected everyhwhere, like a light bulb
I accomplished the same thing with a PVC Y-pipe and a couple of speakers. Put the speakers on both "arms" of the Y.
You run the same signal through both speakers, but invert the phase on one of the speakers.
And that was in high school AP physics.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
Linear transformations cannot create new frequencies, only alter the relative intensity of frequencies that already exist. If ultrasonic sound is being heard, some nonlinearity somewhere is converting it to audible sound.
The thing that I have to wonder about is that this kind of nonlinearity implies fairly high (ultrasonic) sound intensities, and suggests that stuff inside your head is being driven beyond its elastic limit. The big thing that seems to me to be missing from the article is any statement of the ultrasonic sound power level, in decibels, that is being delivered to your head (and the ratio between the actual ultrasonic sound level and the apparent audible sound level).
How does this compare, for example, to the sound levels used for ultrasonic imaging in medicine?
I'm not suggesting that the process is necessarily dangerous, but it isn't obvious that it's intrinsically safe, either. It's one thing to be subjected to high-power ultrasound a few dozen times during your lifetime for the purpose of preserving your health. It's quite another to be subjected to it day in and day out, for your convenience in listening to music, or for some advertiser's convenience in interrupting your train of thought.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Tab books published instructions how to build a device that does exactly this decades ago... TAB!
Yeah, I know the cover looks ridiculous... I bought it when I was a teen and still have it - neat projects inside and better written than the cover would indicate.
- Preferences: Solaris 10 (servers), Ubuntu (desktops), Solaris 11 (personal servers) -
There's a engineering project that's been around for some time now that offers the best noise-cancelation technology out there. It's quite easy to do, almost a 30 minute project for you DIY'ers (do it yourself). But so far, the results are almost 100% perminate.
The only tool you need is an ice-pick and perhaps quite a few ultra-absorbant towels to help with the clean-up afterwards.
After this project, you'll never again be bothered by advertisers sound projection systems. I can also go into a project that will cancel out visual advertisements.
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
will dominate this market, because there is a new technique in acoustics that will eclipse the ultrasound method. Using something called time reversal, you can pinpoint the output of sound to a single location in 3 dimensional space, focusing around objects, people whatever; no beam, no drop off.
This focusing can be done with more than just sound waves however, and the first applications are in medicine, however, it does apply to sound as well.
The basic idea is that if you create a sound from some source location, and record all of the noise at another location, then play this noise signal backwards from the recorded location the sound will reappear in the one spot from which it was originally played. An analogy is that if you take a pool ball, put it right in front of a pocket, and then bounce it outwards really hard, letting it bounce against the walls multiple times, but noting the exact location of the last bounce of the ball, then if you reshot the ball at the exact spot where you last saw it bounce, it would go back in the whole.
-ashot
"Roadside" breakdowns at 1500 ft. would be one
good reason.
This system relies on non-linearities to produce different frequencies. It's the same principle that is used to transform radio frequencies into audio in a radio. The basic frequency transforming component is called a mixer. Usually mixers are quite lossy. ie. you have to put a lot more energy in than you get out. In this case they are using the air or part of my body as the mixer so I expect that this process is really lossy. So the first question is: "How much energy are they bombarding me with?"
Second: It is well known that ultrasonic energy at the right frequency produces a fear reaction in people. They are afraid but because they can't hear anything, they don't know why.
For sure I don't want anyone pointing one of those things at me until it is PROVEN safe.
I seem to recall from earlier investigations into the technology, it involves crossing two high-frequency sounds, with the "output" modulated on to one of the beams. The HF carriers "cancel out", and what's left is what you hear, apparently emanating from nowhere...
This sentence no verb.
Does it shoot a "laser" from a "Death Star". Which can be averted for "one million dollars"?
I hate sigs.
They're using ultrasound to make the interference pattern as tight as possible. Very cool - I can see, say, clipping a tracker pin (Wi-Fi, perhaps?) on my shirt, then telling my computer or stereo speakers to track that. That's probably one of the harder parts, though, making it self-directing like that. Bet your PVC couldn't do it. Could be a better way to listen to TV at night, or to play the FPS games whose sound effects my family loathes. Or ... well, there are oodles of applications that are consumer oriented
These 'spots' will be known as 'ears' and will be mounted on either side of the head.
Sorry, I can't talk long; the other people in the restaurant are starting to complain about the smell of my socks.
What they wanted
was a sound that could kill someone from a distance
so they go ahead
and the meter's over in the red
it's a mistake in the making
WTF are harkonens? The first thing I thought of was those alien dogs from Half-Life, the ones that sent out the (oddly visible) sounds that hurt you.
I saw the inventor demostrate this on TechTV months ago. As he panned the speaker across the microphone, you could hear the sound fade in and then fade out to total silence as he pointed the speaker away. Very, very cool.
The company producing the equipment is American Technology Corporation at http://www.atcsd.com/tl_hss.html According to their own site one test showed a level of 110 db at 2 metres at 48KHz giving an apparent audio level (3 KHz) of 95 db. The level at 16 metres was 80 db at 48 KHz and still 90 db at 3KHz. Apparently they are already installing them in soft drink dispensing machines in Tokyo. (We soon won't know who is schizophrenic and who isn't). Cheers
To me, hypersonic means moving much, much faster than the speed of sound. Which is not the intended meaning here -- they are talking about soundwaves, so how can the soundwaves move faster than sound?
[1] - AFAIK, in Greek hyper means the same as super in Latin, namely above.
...comin' out your speaker
Rhythm is the key as we open up the door...
It would be simple to defeat though. The effect relies on heterodyning a signal (mixing HF to produce an intermodulation effect) so broadcasting white noise above the range of hearing should drown the wanted signal nicely - just like interference on an AM radio. Say a small device located near the billboard - or two piezo drivers on the outside of headphones, heck you could build it into your cellphone hands-free kit.
Done well, you wouldn't hear a thing; even partial cancellation should reduce the adspeak into something akin to a distant ocean sound.
I think there would be privacy isues to overcome on the part of the Admen first however - remember the hoo-haa over subliminal advertising?
Dear Mr Spelling Nazi,
Your dictionary really sucks. The word you were looking for was permanent.
Thankyou for your time.
While I agree that this would suck, it could have benefits. Anything used for spamming receives a *LOT* of funding...this sort of technology could mature very, very quickly because of its revenue stream, leading to other, more practical uses. Remember, if it weren't for pr0n, we would prolly still be surfing on 28.8 modems, not broadband.
--trb
It worked by causing interference patterns between two ultrasonic beams. The low frequency beats translated into audiable frequencies, forming a 'beam of sound'. It seems awfully similar to this 'new' technology to me.
I'll try and dig up a reference.
*someone in the cone of silence*
*sees peoples mouths moving. realizes they are talking to him.
"I'm in the cone of silence, you insensitive clods!"
What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
They also get a mention in this article - which seems tailored towards a slightly different type of reader.
hm?
So when George Bush says 'God has spoken to him' we now know that it was these guys playing a joke.
Seriously though, I was wondering how loud a sound can be before it spreads far outside its cone. Could you play your music at rock concert levels (100 db+) without others hearing it? Or is just useful at a small single speaker walkman level?
... of this technology: a continuous looping tape focused on the neighbors' barking dog saying "Bad dog! Sit!"
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
so now I don't have to hear the TV when I am not in the line of sight of the speaker face!!!
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Imagine combining this technology with "The Brown Noise"...now that would be the ultimate weapon!
Not cone of silence!
Cone of marketing.
Cone of limited time only specials!
Cone of "welcome passerby, if you look directly to your left...."
Cone of "your girlfriend can't hear this, so listen closely..."
Just so this post isn't totally lame, here is a potential useful application.
Directed sound technology might be useful in applications where you want to give someone audible feedback or instructions, where someone normally would have one of those tiny earpieces. Cyrano de Bergerac. (See the commedy with Steve Martin called Roxane.) One man is secretly prompting another man with what to say to lure a potential girlfriend.
Now you could send someone secret audible messages so that they say intelligent things instead of their own original thoughts. Useful for political campaigns where public figure is near to public crowd, near enough for them to notice any earpiece electronics he might be wearing.
The price of freedom is eternal litigation.
Imagine it. You're innocently standing somewhere at night when you hear a disembodied voice that no one else around you can hear. Then all the cats and dogs start howling and bats start flying round in circles because they're all confused by the ultrasound. I wonder if Stephen King is an investor in this system??
Now I'll be able to aim one of these babies at the car next to me that's disrupting my heartbeat with it's pulsing audio garbage. I'll aim Maria Callas at 'em - at 120 decibels.
...at the Wachovia (formerly First Union (formerly CoreStates)) Center in Philadelphia, which opened in 1996.
There are multimedia exhibits in the concourse that each have a single, odd-looking speaker mounted on the ceiling directly above them, pointed straight down. They look more like funky light fixtures than speakers. The sound they emit is barely audible except to the person using the kiosk, who is standing in the 'sweet spot.'
"The fine folks at the MIT Sound Media Lab have come up with a cheap and practical way to focus sound: "A beam of light can be controlled in many ways - it can be aimed at one person in a crowd, spread to fill a room, or projected to create rich, distant imagery. We can now do these very same things with sound. The Audio Spotlight can be used in two major ways: As directed audio, sound is directed at a specific listener or area, to provide a private or area specific listening space. As projected audio, sound is projected against a distant object, creating an audio image. This audio image is literally a projected loudspeaker - sound appears to come directly from the projection, just like light." While still under development, they are testing applications of the device in collaboration with several of their media lab sponsors in preparation for eventual commercial release."
I also recall another story someplace where a guy was messing with a portable version of this in a mall, spooking people out. Apparently the sound appears in the persons head, but you do know exactly which direction it is coming from.
I can see the potential to harrass politicians and other public speakers right now. It is definitely an acquired skill to be able to speak without stumbling despite that kind of distraction.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
A friend of mine is testing one of the HSS models for use in a retail store. He said he was able to send a sound over 300 feet without loss of sound quality.
A football field!
I think a great use for this would be long-range lobbying of our elected officials as they exit cars, restaurants, etc.
Also, I could finally pull off the "Real Genius" Kent prank.
.. to complement Janus!
As a college lecturer, I've been able to use directed sound to selectively impart knowledge to certain students in my class and not to others... at least that's what my students tell me:
"We didn't cover that is class!"
"You never said we had a test today!"
"Homework due?! You didn't tell us that."
My wife went to an tech award show last year at which this product won something. The presentor mentioned that the pentagon was also interested in the product. He said that it is possible to turn the volume up to lethal levels.
Since this will invariably be used to make irritating ads, time to use a set of speakers and some computing power to devise a directed sound device detector. Figure out where the spam is coming from, then direct a high energy sound laser at the source, anihhilating it.
Ultrasonics aren't necessary to delivery focused sound waves. There's a whispering gallery exhibit at chicago's Museum of Science and Industry demonstrates this. The technology is simply to have send and receiver of hte sound at the foci of an ellipsoid. The speaker and listener don't even have to be facing one another.
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
The scene in Minority Report which has the Tom Cruise character walking through a gauntlet of targeted advertising ("John Anderson, wouldn't you like a Guiness right now?" "John Anderson, this car offers you...") is my personal hell.
I saw that shot more than a few times back when Starbuck was a man. ~ lucabrasi999
Sweet I'll donate one for John Kerry.. then one for Michael Moore, pretty soon the USA will be socialist free!
Could this technology be used to ensure that only the idiot next to me at the traffic light, who has more money than brains, and is listening to hip hop at 140db, hear his crap music?
Speaking of which ... I wanted to raise this in the YRO section: my recent trips on Jet Blue airlines leaving from JFK have been marred by the noise of blaring TVs at the terminal. You cannot find a quiet spot to wait for your flight. Apparently no one reads anymore or they're not bothered by the barrage of a constant stream of noise from CNN and sports games. I wanted to take a gun and blow out the speakers it's so annoying. Anyone else encounter this crap?
Facts:
Prior art exists, but American Technology is the company with the most recent patents, and uses different techniques to make this into a practical sound system. Do a patent search
American Technology currently has two versions using this technology. One for consumer applications (HSS) and one for military applications (LRAD). The second is not really a weapon so much as a long distance hailing system for use at check points, on ships, or when dealing with crowds of protesters. It can project a high decible warning tone that is painfull if need be or it can just be used to project coherent messages over great distances (could also be used for radioless communications out in the field).
As far as safety, the technology has been in development for the last 8-10 years, and no issues were discovered. Apparently the ultrasonic frequencies used are not powerful enough to cause problems.
The other company developing the technology was set up by an MIT student (now graduate). This technology was started a couple of years after American Technology made its announcements about HSS. Also, the second company only has one patent (for improved power supply), while American Technology has extensive patents covering all aspects of its design. American Technology is also currently producing actual commercial products, while as far as I can tell, the second company is still creating prototypes.
One could argue that there is a need for it now - self defense from man *and* machine...
Later models will include the ability to "throw your voice" at a distance, which will obviously be a boon in planning meetings, when you can make your other-OS-weilding nemesis volunteer to get that new AI web recommendations module done and shipped by next month. That one will be the iEdgar....
You could be standing right next to someone and they would hear nothing.
That's the idea, but in reality it works a tad different. Wherever the beam hits sort of becomes the apparent source of the sound. So if you aim it at someone, they'll hear it quite clearly - more so than everyone else - but the sound will now appear to be coming from them. Quieter, but still apparent.
I've got 2 of the HSS units right here, and though they're super-cool for messing with people, (See other posts) they've got some drawbacks.
1) There's no bass, treble only.
2) The units we have come with a rather noisy cooling fan.
3) They clip quite easily - you have to watch your volume levels.
4) They're not terribly reliable. I've seen them in a few labs I've worked in or with, and we all seem to have the same issues.
Overall a cool product, especially for the gee-whiz factory, but certainly not ready for practical use just yet.
I hate to tell you guys but directional sound and the cone of silence is nothing new. Back in the late 60s the Chief, Agent 86, and I...
Oh wait, nevermind. There is no Control. We don't have a large cone of silence. I've never heard of this "directional sound" business.
No that's not a phone ringing. That's just my shoe.
I'll bet the defense dept is interested! Imagine the possibilities. From a hidden location, aim one at a fundamentalist insert religion. Suddenly that person hears The Voice : "This is God / Allah / Vishnu / whomever, and I want you to destroy the Eiffel Tower / Church of the Holy Sepulchre / Wailing Wall / New York Stock Exchange / Kaaba Shrine". Or "I want you to build me an ark.".
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
What???
Had a full themed club setup with scavenger type role
;)
plays where you had to sit or stand in a specific spot you were directed to in the club to recieve the next instructions.
Would be able to do this if they can finish it
IMO, this technology has alot more potential for good than bad... think about sitting in a library or something and listening to something on a computer without headphones, or going to a museum/car/computer show and hearing about some new technology without being distracted about somethign else?
I don't think the example with the police officer and crowd control is a good idea though... the rest of the crowd kinda needs to hear what the police officer is saying... I would be kinda unnerved if there was a disturbance and all I see is a cop yelling but not saying anything...
now all the geeks can hear God telling them to use Lunix
"kill him"
muhahaha
A blog I run for the wealth
Seriously, marketers will be in heaven, able to target ads at passerbys.
Targeting specific people in a crowd doesn't make any sense advertising-wise or cost-wise, especially if it costs more than broadcasting a message to the entire crowd.
If marketers had any interest whatsoever in this type of advertising, there would be bullhorns in public places already constantly exhorting everyone to Drink Coke or Join The Army or whatever. As it stands, only political candidates and ice cream trucks are willing to do this.
Once they get it working and get the price down, there are good applications. PC speakers for office environments. Audio at trade shows. Anywhere there are many audio sources that you don't want to interfere.
It's not clear what the holdup is. It doesn't seem that complicated.
Given that we already have states populated with people who want to outlaw teaching evolution and instead teach "creation science", as well as juries who are letting off people who kill their kids with rocks after God told them to do it, what could posiable go wrong with this technology?
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
In sixth grade.. went on a class field trip to Washington D.C. Touring one of those old-ass historical white pillar buildings, dont remember which one, but the tour guide stood a good distance from the group, and in a certain spot on the floor with his back turned, we could hear ever word he was whispering, but only when he was in that certain spot, and we were in our certain spot. amazing sheeat.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
He did mean what he said. His phrasing wasn't extreme enough for "fulmigrite" to be appropriate, and "mitla" is too subtle.
project for you DIY'ers (do it yourself).
Shouldn't that be "DIY'ers (do in yourself)"?
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
I'd hazard a wild guess that an ultrasound carrier is amplitude modulated with audio frequencies and that the ear drum and associated structure acts like a demodulator and low-pass filter.
The article claims that the air between the ultrasonic speaker and the listener acts as your demodulator. Yes, air has a slightly nonlinear response, and some audiophiles who prefer tube amplifiers claim that tube distortion sounds like that of air.
That was only in the original (awful) movie, not even the book. The only thing close was "the weapon" used by the honored matres in chapterhouse, but it was never really explained what it did.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
I can already accomplish this with a pair of headphones. I don't think that was the most impressive application of this technology =)
True story.
Guy turning around in circles, "Can you hear me now?"
Next step, getting those cell phones off our belts and in to our shoes.
It is based on the observation by microwave (radar and other) technicians would experience what "sounded" like popping or static inside their heads (ie, it wasn't coming in their ears) when they worked on live equipment. Apparently the microwave energy was causing neurons in the aural region of the brain to fire, which came across as "hearing" (though in the head only).
This was later refined so that tones, then later voice, could be sent. I have heard that voice actually sounds rather "gravelly" - it isn't really useful for more than that (and not even that, actually). There is a company that has a patent on it, and I know a few space and defence agencies have looked into it (there used to be some references on the net about this - NASA was one, I think Australia's "Dept of Defence" (or whatever they are known as) was looking into the possible military use of it).
The conspiracy theory side of this is known as "voice to skull" technology (do a google on it and have fun). Let's take it a step further - imagine a psy-op "weapon" for propaganda purposes that could be pointed at a person, and spoken through - convincing the person that "someone was in his head" or he was "hearing voices in his head tell him things, bad things". Now, apply that to the "enemy". Then, apply that to the general local population (ie, US)...
Who says that "mind control", "tinfoil hats" and such is all just "bunk"? There may be more to it than we will ever know...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
One step closer to the cone of silence!
Would you believe two cans with a piece of string?
Missed it by that much.
hearable? hearable!? ... my 3rd grade teacher wishes to introduce you to her Cone of High Heel, sir!
-- n
I had previously brainstormed about how a club experience would be better for me: the big one is if you could have a "cone of silence": listen to the music you like, if you like, without any.
I kind of imagine the party rooms from "Our Man Flint" on Galaxy Island where you move past the curtain to an ajoining room and it's instantly silent or a different genre of music (Ah, but you are a pleasure unit, dear :-) ;-) ).
You could do it with everyone having an iPod/MP3 player and earbuds but then you could not converse. Another way to do that is to use those "sound parabolas" you see at some music stores (e.g. Fry's has them in the music CD section). Another way would be to use this ultrasonic directed sound technology.
That's nice, but now take that to another level: what if you used phased-array technology and beamed hundreds of different ultrasonic signals to specific locations keyed off a person's location in the room (RFID, etc), where the sound follows them around as they walk. Only when you get in proximity to the person to you finally hear their "musical universe". Imagine a club that was simultaneously Deep House, IDM, Ambient, Jazz, Blues, Rock, etc. - that would be a trip. You could make it a club feature to allow each patron to build their own playlist.
Just a crazy idea. However consider this prior art if anyone is thinking of patenting it. :-)
AWESOME! Now while at work sitting at my desk I don't have to ask my self if it's going to be an iffy fart! I can just let them all go and direct the sound to the floor or if my boss is pissing me off I can direct it at him.
--Steele
I would be very alarmed indeed if I saw someone attempting to generate an acoustic pressure of over 120dB (I think they need 150dB to make this work well), and not just for my ears, to say nothing of the effects on certain animals, bats etc.
This whole thing is just speculation and hype, with total disregard for safety and environmental issues.
Sounds of similar frequencies create beat frequencies. It requires no nonlinearity; only alternating constructive and destructive interference of waves.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
Casino cheats could have a field day with this.
What?
(directed sound at Victim1):Your shoe is untied Victim1: Did you hear that? Victim2: Hear what? Victim1: That voice, didn't you hear it? Victim2: No. Victim1: It said "Your shoe is untied" (directed sound at Victim1): I said no such thing etc...
No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife between the shoulder blades will seriously cramp his style.
I'm serious. Get on any commuter train or bus, and you'll no doubt be subjected to the tinny sound of some dumbass's (or several dumbasses') music spilling from their headphones -- audible even over the sound of the vehicle. Give them ultrasonic directed-sound headphones and they can destroy their hearing to their hearts' content without annoying me.
(And don't get me started about the double-dumbasses who get on with their laptop or one of those portable DVD players and cranks something up on regular speakers, never mind headphones.)
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
Sorry, but I gotta ask...
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary
I find it interesting that after all these years the Cone of Silence, the useless security divice from the spy spoof Get Smart, still needs no introduction.
It's doubly funny since the term actually predates Get Smart - and refers to something else entirely.
The "Cone of Silence" is the area directly over a vertically-polarized radio antenna (i.e. off the end of the dipole) where there is little or no signal.
In WW II, aircraft did a lot of navigation using radio beacons. The easy way to do this is to fly to, and over, a beacon, perhaps setting a course that went from beacon to beacon, rather than navigating by obtaining bearings from multiple beacons (although the latter was also done).
As you approach a beacon the signal strength increases. But as you fly over it, through the "cone of silence", it suddenaly drops out - then reappears behind you. Then you know that you just went right over it - and thus exactly where you are - and that it's time to set your course for the next waypoint.
With so many bomber crews (and stories about them) the term "cone of silence" became publically known. But with few people other than navigators and radiomen familiar enough with it to know exactly what was meant, it became a buzzword with the implication of having something to do with wartime and security.
Which gave the writers of Get Smart an opportunity to use a rotten pun for a couple air minutes of slapstick by redefining it. B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I'm deaf, you insensitive clod!
For those of you in New York, you can do this in Grand Central as well. Just behind the main hall over by the entrance to that Oyster diner (I forgot the name) there are a series of archways. If someone stands on one side and whispers into the corner of the archway, another person standing diagonally from them can hear them perfectly. It's eerie -- especially in a place as loud as Grand Central.
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This looks suprisingly like a technology developed at Nortel back in the mid-1990s called SoundBeam. Even more interesting: it would seem that the MIT Media Lab picked up the Nortel technology and continued to use it in their own prototypes through the late 1990s.
Nortel's brief description of the technology (available for licensing!) is here.
The description of the MIT Media Lab device as an evolution of the Nortel design is here. The full site about the Media Lab device that used Nortel technology is here.
Lots of people can "discover" the same physical effect. I'm just curious whether the MIT Audio Spotlight is another name for Nortel's SoundBeam or something different that they developed separately. If the MIT guys/gals developed their own, it's natural to wonder what its relationship to SoundBeam is, considering it seems to have been invented around the same time the Media Lab was making prototypes with the Nortel technology. Perhaps Nortel's pre-existing patent moots the "race to millions" that the Technology Review story implies. Regardless, the story is obviously a little more complicated than the Technology Review article.
Cool, but nothing new ... Nor should any of the mentioned people be credited with it's invention. This technology, properly known as "linear sound-plane technology," has been around for several years. It really is an amazing technology, for obvious reasons. We've got two linear-plane speakers here at the office, and they are AMAZING. They are not exagerating when they say that one person can hear it, while another cannot. The width and depth of the plane can be controlled, and there is no variance in volume anywhere. Awesome stuff. .. 2
As I understand it, two ultrasound beams are used. They are directed to create an interference pattern. The nature of such patterns, and of the focusing abilities of ultrasound, is that the relevant portion of the pattern can be focused on a pretty small region.
The ultrasound beams create "beats" - they superimpose so that the frequencies "created" are audible (rather than being greater than 20 kHz, as the original ultrasound beams are, they're somewhere between 20 Hz and 20-ish kHz).
Lots of jargon, but it's basic high school physics.
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If marketers had any interest whatsoever in this type of advertising, there would be bullhorns in public places already constantly exhorting everyone to Drink Coke or Join The Army or whatever. As it stands, only political candidates and ice cream trucks are willing to do this.
Depends on where you are, in Tokyo it's extremely common to see people paid to hand out tissues advertising a shop/resteraunt, or just stand out front and yell (well, yell's not the right word, but close enough) at passerby's to advertise the shop. This tech combined with some sensors to track moving objects (aka people) could cut out the need to pay a person to do that, and make sure you hit even more people going by with your message.WHAT? WHAT DID YOU SAY????????
(Dear Slashdot, yes, I *meant* to use all those caps, it is *supposed* to be like yelling!)
That is not even remotely similar. RTFA.
This is "directional sound" with no parabolic shapes in sight, made through an entirely different mechanism.
Cyrano de Bergerac. (See the commedy with Steve Martin called Roxane.)
Or why not see the movie Cyrano de Bergerac or the play. Much better ending than the happy-clappy Roxanne.
Hey you! Join the Navy!
Every time you run "emerge", a Microsoft drone dies.
I remember being suprised with a clever demonstration at an ice rink on BBC's Tomorrows World (may it RIP). Don't know exactly how similar this is to that, but this isn't the first time it's been talked about.
John_Chalisque