Slashdot Mirror
One-Way Sound Walls Proven Possible
disco_tracy writes "Imagine a room where a band is playing. Neighbors can't hear the music, but if someone outside the room is talking, the musicians can hear it. The concept — a kind of one-way mirror for sound — seems imaginary, but two Italian scientists recently pushed this kind of sound manipulating technology closer to reality (abstract)."
Sounds like a good use for interrogation rooms...
What's wrong with an ordinary soundproof wall with a microphone on one side and a speaker on the other?
Perfect for porn consumption! Just don't accidentally install the wall the wrong way around.
Moo Shu Pork. It is especially good today. Moo Shu Pork. It is especially good today. Seriously?
Imagine a room where a band is playing. Neighbors can't hear the music, but if someone outside the room is talking, the musicians can hear it.
They can't be a very good band if they can hear somebody talking in the next room while they're playing...
No sig today...
- "You have a banana in your ear!"
- "I'm sorry, what?"
- "YOU HAVE A BANANA IN YOUR EAR!"
- "I'm sorry, I can't hear you, you're on the wrong side of the wall!"
not very obviously break the production site by dumping the entire fortune file out with every page.
World to Slashdot calling, it would like you to know about little tiny things called "testing environments". You should learn about them.
"Imagine a room where a band is playing. Neighbors can't hear the music, but if someone outside the room is talking, the musicians can hear it."
Wow! Who needs flying cars when we can have this!
Although the acoustic technology remains theoretical, the researchers think that it can be built. Lepri cited optics, saying that nonlinear photonics is a well-developed field now.
Couldn't i just sound proof a room, put a few microphones outside the room send the signal in to the room. Doing it passively is cool but there is no way it would be cheaper then some soundboard a microphone and a speaker.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
... a one way sound system was called a radio.
"Imagine a room where a band is playing. Neighbors can't hear the music, but if someone outside the room is talking, the musicians can hear it."
How does this wall mean the musicians will hear the talking over their own music? Is there one-way sound air coming soon too?
maybe they'll develop a helmet that your spouse can wear !
Harry Potter did that, like, five years ago!
The article describes the proposed theoretical mechanism as a "wave diode" - I wonder if the same principle is applicable to light? I don't know if "light diodes" already exist in some sense, but that seems like a possibly useful component for optical computing...?
I'd love this for the walls of my kids bedroom. They can't hear the TV downstairs, but we can hear them yell or cry.
and they are looking for investors to revolutionise the world of... paranoid musicians... i dunno i got nothing?
Ok so if you can turn a flat surface into a speaker, which has been done. And you can cancel out the sound of a room to the outside using the same technique, which has been done. Why couldn't you just put a microphone on both sides of the surface and only cancel out the sound from one direction?
Ever since I was a kid I've dreamed of having a hot/cold pad. It only lets heat go through it one way, cold side painted blue, hot side painted red. Put it around your soda or beer can blue side in, it cools off your drink, remove when it's just right. Put it around your coffee or soup red side in, it heats it up.
It would probably need a special holding case otherwise your backpack would catch on fire while carrying it. :-)
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
Sounds like the Cone of Silence from Get Smart. Lets just hope it works better :-)
a Cone of Silence
"Are they made from real Girl Scouts?" ~Wednesday Addams
Until every recording gets polluted by sounds from the outside.
Laughter from the next room, babies crying, fire trucks passing by etc.
- "If one man can create that much hate, you can only imagine how much love we as a togetherness can create."
The same reason why a 1 way mirror is better in some applications than a video camera on one side of a wall with a monitor on the other.
On possible use is in security. People can avoid cameras, and small unseen microphones are not directional. Airports, casinos, police stations, and other security heavy areas will certainly have a use.
Imagine the CIA setting up a room for foreign dignitaries. The dignitaries sweep the room for bugs. But unknown to them, the floor of their room is a 1 way sound barrier, with agents sitting below with directional microphones pointed at the ceiling underneath each room.
Imagine a submarine with a section of the vessel being a 1 way sound room where large microphones reside. All other walls are sound deadened except 1 outside wall. More equipment could sit there than any outside array of microphones, listening for enemy ships... but without an outside sonar signature, and without worrying about hearing internal noises.
Even naturalists would love it. Imagine a retreat in a forrest where every outside wall was 1 way, making it sound like you weren't even in a building, but the animals were not disturbed by the sounds you make snapping pictures and talking.
I8-D
This isn't really like a one-way mirror. With a one-way mirror light travels through it and reflects from it the same in both directions. It's just that the amount of light reflecting from the bright side is much much greater than the 'signal' which comes through from the dark side.
This is apparently a true 'one-way' material.
That's active noise cancellation. This is a proposed mechanism that uses materials with nonlinear acoustic properties to accomplish a similar effect passively. Both methods might be suitable for different situations.
I can imagine it might have many perfectly good uses, but how could it possibly be useful to a band? In a recording situation it would be disastrous! It is difficult enough keeping sirens etc. out of the recording area without actually unviting the sounds into the session.
http://www.acetonestudio.com
Can we wrap children up in this new material? It would make my trips outside of the basement a lot more bearable.
The "Cone of Silence"!
Unfortunately for the neighbors, the band is more likely to install the walls the other way around. Making a room that can be monitored from the outside (by a sound engineer/producer) while rejecting outside sounds would be ideal for a recording studio.
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
I could also see this being used (if it's inexpensive enough once produced) for some possibly horrifying ends... Imagine someone kidnapping someone and instead of putting them in a soundproof dungeon, you have it layered with 1-way material. The person that was kidnapped could scream as loud as they wanted and nobody can hear them. They, on the other hand, could hear EVERYTHING going on on the outside and how close people that could free them could possibly be.
I also see some other uses. TSA lining a wall with the stuff & they put an office on the other side. They can hear everyone as they walk by without alerting people that they're eavesdropping.
It's called: the irreversibility of impedance! This is why, for instance, a loudspeaker isn't a great microphone, and vice versa.
Put the band in a tightly soundproofed room. Put some microphones outside of the room, and amplify the sound from the outside into loudspeakers in the room.
See? Microphone --> amp --> speaker. One way signal with off-the-shelf stuff.
We can hear the idiots inside but they don't seem to be able to hear us.
a better masturbation chamber...
This sounds like it would be brilliant for the military. Contain the sound of a craft inside but allow the occupants to be aware of what is going on around them. That is pretty much a priceless advantage.
AJ Henderson
There was a scene like that in Dune.
A material that allows evergy to only pass one way seems like it would defy some sort of law of physics. Imagine a cube made of this stuff that only lets sound in... Would the energy inside the cube continue to build until it erupted in a sonic boom?
Just make a soundproof wall; put some microphones on one side and speakers on the other.
(you'd have to use some basic amplification, otherwise it would work both ways and the speakers would work like mics and vice versa).
Sony's headquarters must be built out of this stuff.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
Frankly, the band that is playing, won't be able to hear someone talking on the other side of the wall whether they get that kind of wall or not :P
"Talk to the hand."
If anybody knows of a passive sound cancellation system using stereo speakers and microphones I'd be interested in hearing about it.
Make a small cube with each wall made of this material so that sound can enter the cube but it can't get out. Next, let it fill up with sound. Take it to the airport, construction sites, concerts, etc...
Then you leave it somewhere with a sign on it that says, "Open Me."
...was a time traveler!
AL: *singing away inside booth*
TIM: Al! Can you hear me?
AL: I can hear you...
TIM: Think about that.
Airplane turbines, anyone?
Or better, sonic boom cancellation?
We have the technology to fly from EU to USA in minutes, yet we don't use it because of the unacceptable noise.
If you're waiting for everybody to agree with each other (or even be consistent with themselves over time) it ain't gonna happen.
Best political-geek satire of the year.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
before this is made mandatory in new housing construction. The police will be able to just walk up to your house and hear what's going on inside without you even knowing they're there.
microphone on one side, speaker on the other.
Looks like we have an opportunity then. Use the technology to house Congress!
I get fed up with these guys wasting my time, with ideas instead of actuality, while trying to drum up interest so that their funding won't be cut off.
Buckaroo Banzai can hear the sound of someone crying within the same room while guitar amps and drums are going full blast?
Quote: Is anybody out there not having a good time?
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
With material like that loudspeakers could be build that won't reflect the sound inside the box back outside through the cone.
One layer of one-way material on the inside, then one sound absorbing layer on the outside.
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