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Material Turns All Surfaces into Stereo
An anonymous reader writes "According to James Bullen of NXT, 'The UK ministry of defense was experimenting with a way to dampen the sound in helicopters and developed a honeycombed material that did the opposite — conducted sound.' Cambridge-based NXT christened it "SurfaceSound" and arranged for it to be crafted into Toyota cars, Gateway computers, Hallmark greeting cards and more.
NXT is working on ways to put the technology to use in touch screens that promise to be part of a new rage in 'natural interfaces' for computers, mobile telephones, televisions and other electronic devices.
Toyota has SurfaceSound in the head liners of four of its car models.
NXT recently made a deal with greeting card giant Hallmark to use the technology in 'big cards with big sound' when opened, Bullen said."
That's great, I've always hated mono surfaces. So flat and everything.
With any luck, in a few years we will be able to turn six surfaces into 5.1!
Not turning any surface into a speaker.
For that you need something like these speakers from Thinkgeek, which stick on to any surface and make that surface the speaker.
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
Great, now we can finally conveniently announce the demolition of the Earth when the time comes!
Now I can give Earth a demonstration of the greatest announcement system in the history of the universe before I demolish it for that hyperspace bypass.
Just imagine a Hawaiian shirt that not only looks loud but is loud.
The British Army now has ideal way to deliver the World's Funniest Joke to the battlefield. They are reportedly looking for a large number of English to Persian translators willing to work in isolated conditions.
A One that isn't cold, is scarcely a One at all.
I misread the headline as "Material Turns All Surfaces into Sterno"
which, although a boon to the catering industry, would be somewhat troubling.
Fortunately, they're just talking about NXT's cool speaker transducers that have been around for quite some time now (yawn...). Given that the laws of acoustics do still apply, even if the speaker is flat, the "cabinet" needs to be properly designed to produce good sound.
I've got a portable speaker that incorporates the technology. Logitech mm28 -- I think I paid $15 for it, although it's discontinued now. Although it does sound fantastic for a tiny $15 speaker, the bass is a bit lacking, and the thing distorts all to hell when the volume is turned up. To be fair, it can be driven *quite* loud, which seems to indicate that the transducers are quite powerful, and that Logitech forgot to include some sort of volume-limiting circuit. It's more or less the most simplistic NXT design you could imagine, as it's a rounded rectangle panel with an NXT transducer a third of the way from either edge.
All in all, with a bit of refinement, it could be turned into a great product, and it's easy to see how there could be many applications for this. Even though it might not produce audiophile sound (at least, not as lotitech had it configured), I imagine that it could be quite handy for "hiding" speakers in various locations, and could definitely be used to improve the sound quality of mobile phones. It also avoids many of the pitfalls of other "flat panel" designs.
Poking around their website reveals that they've got a pretty nifty portfolio of technologies backed up by some hard science -- they've even applied the same technology (in reverse) to produce touch screens.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Ministry of Defence? I would have thought it would be developed by the Ministry of Sound...
all the useful ideas come from either porn or war
Table-ized A.I.
I dread pulling up at a traffic light next to a baser, especially once they start coating their cars with this shit. I'll have to coat my car with the same material, sample their noise and play it back a half-wavelength out of phase so I can cancel it out. If that doesn't work, plan B is the monster truck lift kit.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
of BES speaker fame. He used to make speakers out of styrofoam. They sounded great. His demo was using a door as a sound conductor. Honeycombs are nothing new at all. Look up 'geostats' to find them.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
I can see this at Christmas.
*Little Jimmy* Here you go grandma!
*Grandma* Why thank you Jimmy you're such a
{100 decibels} WE WISH YOU A MERRY CHRISTMAS!...
*Grandma* Augh!
[THUD]
*Little Jimmy* Grandma? Grandma? Why'd you go to sleep?
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
You can also purchase the buttplug-upgrade for the FlexiHalo to listen in infinity.1!
Ah, screw Alice. (When she grows up a bit, anyway;) Think of the packaging for those interactive porn games.
;)
In fact, if you can make a bit of paper play sounds, heck, who needs the game there? The magazine could be its own game. Rub the girl in the photo there and hear her moan, rub her there and she... umm... sorry, gotta go to the bathroom. I'll... uh... do some brainstorming and get back to you later
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
That's good, because honeycomb speakers are big...yeah yeah yeah! They're not small...no no no!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.