Slashdot Mirror
High-Tech Microphone Picks Voices From a Crowd
JerryQ writes with news of an impressive audio detection system from a company called Squarehead that was demonstrated during a professional basketball game. According to Wired, "325 microphones sit in a carbon-fiber disk above the stadium, and a wide-angle camera looks down on the scene from the center of this disk. All the operator has to do is pinpoint a spot on the court or field using the screen, and the Audioscope works out how far that spot is from each of the mics, corrects for delay and then synchronizes the audio from all 315 of them. The result is a microphone that can pick out the pop of a bubblegum bubble in the middle of a basketball game..."
10 microphones were harmed during the posting of this story.
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
Maybe I should've read it then.
But I, like most Slashdotters, am so quick that I can just glance at a poorly written summary and instantly understand all that needs to be known about the topic. It's really a wonderful time-saver being so damn smart I don't even need to know the facts.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
...and if you read the specs from the manufacturers website, they also list 285, 300 and 345 in various places
This is a cool application of a well used technique. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phased_array
The quick breakdown of responses on Slashdot:
The last remaining nerds on Slashdot who actually like technology: "Sweet! That's an impressive display of audio recording techniques!"
The paranoia crowd: "ZOOOOOOOMG that means THEY(tm) can listen in on you! Then they're already stealing your identity to impersonate you! MY PRIVACY IS AT RISK OHNOEZ START REBELLION NOW PLZ KTHX"
The audiophiles: "Pfft. Everyone knows you need at least 560 microphones and analog pickups, else you'll clearly lose so much quality as to be unlistenable by any but the most primitive and underdeveloped of eardrums. Plebs."
cencithomas: "WHERE DID THE TEN MICROPHONES GO?!?"
You've all got it wrong. These are state-of-the-art modern quantum microphones. They work rather excellently -- as long as you don't try to count 'em. That's why the figures in the specs are all over the place -- if they'd just state *one* figure, the darn thing wouldn't be able to hear anything at all! How do you expect to sell something like that?
"Good news, everyone!"