Projecting Sound 'Inside Your Head' 296
Gregus writes "Projecting 'hypersonic sound' has appeared here before, but NY Times Magazine (FRRYYY) has an in-depth article with its lauded inventor and its applications. John Anderton, you could use a Guinness right now." Plus this story includes screwing with Mall Walkers!
Relief (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Relief (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Grado SR 80 (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Grado SR 80 (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Grado SR 80 (Score:2)
DO a search on www.headwize.com, a guy named Apheared once built one that let his Grado SR80s be heard through a steel door in the middle of New York City.
It's a portable amp that ran (runs?) off 16AA batteries... (ok, maybe not so portable!)
I saw this on CNN a while back (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I saw this on CNN a while back (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I saw this on CNN a while back (Score:5, Funny)
The thing is, crackpots are also considered crackpots. The trick is in telling the difference.
Myself, I play the odds. The crackpots outnumber the geniuses by such an astounding margin, I just assume that anybody who sounds like a crackpot, is.
If this is connected to a set of satalites and beamed down very loud music or just a shrill note, somebody could become very powerful, very fast.
Now, see what I'm talking about? This is exactly the kind of thing that makes you sound like a crackpot.
Re:I saw this on CNN a while back (Score:2)
Re:I saw this on CNN a while back (Score:2)
No air, no sound.
Re:I saw this on CNN a while back (Score:2)
Its nothing great, headphones do this already, (Score:2)
The only thing great about this is the fact that this has a better range, but headphones and speakers already have the ability to place sounds in certain places.
My headphones the Grado SR80s can place the sound anywhere all the way around my head, including the inside my head sound.
State of the art speakers can already place sound in different areas, look I dont care if they put ads on these new speakers, I'll have my headphones on and they will be blocked out.
How does it work? (Score:2)
Oh joy! (Score:5, Funny)
Political Uses- Angry Voices in The Head (Score:4, Insightful)
The NYTimes article describes the protoype used as being very portable.
flash forward.
Can you imagine a protester using this to tell a politician what they think about the politician? or dozens of protesters.
Or aimed at Bill Gates at Comdex. or any other celebrity.
more subtly done, just a quiet voice wispering in the ear "you're evil" or something. Even with glass in between, the glass should resonate nicely.[?]
This will turn being a celeb into a living hell.
I can envision the havok teenage boys with these things could do.
wow (Score:4, Funny)
Tasteless (Score:4, Funny)
Ok this is a new low for the NY Times, using pr0n to attract readers. I mean, how horny do you think we are?
This is scary.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:This is scary.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:This is scary.. (Score:2, Interesting)
In reality, HIDA is both warning and weapon. If used from a battleship, it can ward off stray crafts at 500 yards with a pinpointed verbal warning. Should the offending vessel continue to within 200 yards, the stern warnings are replaced by 120-decibel sounds that are as physically disabling as shrapnel. Certain noises, projected at the right pitch, can incapacitate even a stone-deaf terrorist; the bones in your head are brutalized b
Re:This is scary.. (Score:2)
Re:This is scary.. (Score:4, Interesting)
So will headphones with a hard external shell.
If someone puts sound someplace in public, there is really no way to avoid it now. The difference is, with HSS, you can have fine spatial control over the exact position of the sound. If anything, there should be a lot more quiet in public, and perhaps more sound in very specific locations.
I kinda like the idea that you could, in principle, use a hard surface to totally reflect the sound without loss and direct it at someone else.
A mirror, if you will.
Or, you could use a waveguide to do it.
Re:This is scary.. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:This is scary.. (Score:5, Funny)
*Hello, friend.*
Who's that?
*I'd like to make you an offer you can't ignore.*
Where are you? I can't see you.
*Now, for a limited time only, you can buy our exclusive AD BLOCKER equipment for just $49.95*
Aahhh! I'm going insane!
*Remember, AD BLOCKER contains Tuning INterference Frequency Overriding Impedence Level Helmet Addition Technology for improved AD BLOCKING!*
Help me!
TTFN
Re:This is scary.. (Score:2)
Re:This is scary.. (Score:2)
First, bone conduction to the cochlea will only work for low frequencies. It is unlikely to be useful here.
Second, here is my take on how this works. I haven't actually read any of the technical lit, but I know a little about acoustics. And, since this is
A laser creates light inside a resonating chamber, and then releases it.
To make the sonic analogy, create ultrasound inside a resonating chamber, and
Re:This is scary.. (Score:2)
Yes, they can beam advertising right into your head, but people aren't going to like that, and it sure isn't going to make people want to buy their product. If any company is silly enough to try that tactic, I'm willing to bet they will learn very quickly how counterproductive it is.
Re:This is scary.. (Score:2)
Subliminal messaging taken to new heights? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, there are the obvious "private advertising" applications mentioned in the article, but this kind of thing can be very interesting - and very frightening.
Picture - you're driving along a road during rush hour. Suddenly, your skull registers the squeal of tires and a massive crash. Or, walking down a sidewalk, a quiet voice inside your head whispers that you're all going to die.
Like any new technology, this one sounds fun, but is going to require some degree of regulations and control to avoid abuse.
Re:Subliminal messaging taken to new heights? (Score:4, Insightful)
Utterly soundproof cars become all the rage; convertibles become well and truly dead.
Hmmm, I wonder if this widget could be combined with anti-noise generators? On the face of it, it seems like a uniform anti-noise sphere would work much better than a point source speaker.
Re:Subliminal messaging taken to new heights? (Score:4, Insightful)
A soundproof car? No thanks. I'd kinda like to hear the sound of real screeching tires if there is an impending accident, or the horn of a runaway truck coming up behind me, or the sirens of an ambulance etc.
Re:Subliminal messaging taken to new heights? (Score:2)
Think of the military applications... (Score:2)
"It's a three-pronged attack. Subliminal, liminal, and superliminal."
"Superliminal?"
"I'll show you. Hey you! Join the navy!"
"Uh, yeah, alright."
"I'm in."
The Simpsons [macalester.edu] is the sum of all wisdom.
Scary applications (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Scary applications (Score:5, Funny)
They can do that already with loudspeakers (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Scary applications (Score:2)
Re:Scary applications (Score:2, Funny)
Huh? (Score:2)
Does anyone happen to have heard this one? What's so freaky about it?
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Informative)
This is some scary stuff. I can't begin to imagine how horrible this could make life.
Isn't that... (Score:2)
Watch out guys.. (Score:4, Funny)
Dupe? (Score:2)
Just wait... (Score:5, Funny)
what about the bass? :D (Score:2, Funny)
tinfoil hats (Score:5, Funny)
Your apologies will be accompanied the cursory "I told you so"
~Z
Re:tinfoil hats (Score:2, Funny)
Article (Score:5, Informative)
The Sound of Things to Come
By MARSHALL SELLA
No one ever notices what's going on at a Radio Shack. Outside a lonely branch of the electronics store, on a government-issue San Diego day in a strip mall where no one is noticing much of anything, a bluff man with thinning, ginger hair and preternaturally white teeth is standing on the pavement, slowly waving a square metal plate toward people strolling in the distance. ''Watch that lady over there,'' he says, unable to conceal his boyish pride for the gadget in his giant hand. ''This is really cool.''
Woody Norris aims the silvery plate at his quarry. A burly brunette 200 feet away stops dead in her tracks and peers around, befuddled. She has walked straight into the noise of a Brazilian rain forest -- then out again. Even in her shopping reverie, here among the haircutters and storefront tax-preparers and dubious Middle Eastern bistros, her senses inform her that she has just stepped through a discrete column of sound, a sharply demarcated beam of unexpected sound. ''Look at that,'' Norris mutters, chuckling as the lady turns around. ''She doesn't know what hit her.''
Norris is demonstrating something called HyperSonic Sound (HSS). The aluminum plate is connected to a CD player and an odd amplifier -- actually, a very odd and very new amplifier -- that directs sound much as a laser beam directs light. Over the past few years, mainly in secret, he has shown the device to more than 300 major companies, and it has slackened a lot of jaws. In December, the editors of Popular Science magazine bestowed upon HSS its grand prize for new inventions of 2002, choosing it over the ferociously hyped Segway scooter. It is no exaggeration to say that HSS represents the first revolution in acoustics since the loudspeaker was invented 78 years ago -- and perhaps only the second since pilgrims used ''whispering tubes'' to convey their dour messages.
As Norris continues to baffle shoppers by sniping at them with the noises he has on this CD (ice cubes clanking into a glass, a Handel concerto, the plash of a waterfall), some are spooked, and some are drawn in. Two teenage girls drift over from 100 feet away and ask, in bizarre Diane Arbus-type unison, ''What is that?''
Norris responds with his affable mantra -- ''In'nat cool?'' -- before going into a bit of simplified detail: how the sound waves are actually made audible not at the surface of the metal plate but at the listener's ears. He doesn't bother to torment the girls with the scientific gymnastics of how data are being converted to ultrasound then back again to human-accessible frequencies along a confined column of air. ''See, the way your brain perceives it, the sound is being created right here,'' Norris explains to the Arbus girls, lifting a palm to the side of his head. ''That's why it's so clear. Feels like it's inside your skull, doesn't it?''
In the years Norris has demonstrated HSS, he says, that's been the universal reaction: the sound is inside my head. So that's the way he has started to describe it.
Just to check the distances, I pace out a hundred yards and see if the thing is really working. (I've tried this other times -- in a posh hotel in Manhattan, in another parking lot in San Diego -- but HSS is so often suspected of being a parlor trick that it always seems to bear checking.) Norris pelts me with the Handel and, to illustrate the directionality of the beam, subtly turns the plate side to side. And the sound is inside my head, roving between my ears in accord with each of Norris's turns.
The applications of directional sound go quite a bit beyond messing with people at strip malls, important as this work may be. Norris is enthusiastic about all of the possibilities he can propose and the ones he can't. Imagine, he says, walking by a soda machine (say, one of the five million in Japan that will soon employ HSS), triggering a proximity detector, then hearing what you alone hear -- the plink of ice cubes and the invocation, ''Wouldn'
This will likely become... (Score:5, Interesting)
What about sonic weapons? Is there any reason why a rigged emitter couldn't be built that would emit a signal loud enough to rupture the eardrums of a specific target? Or at the very least, cause excruciating pain?
I think the inevitable barrage of targeted advertising will be the least of our worries with this new technology.
Re:This will likely become... (Score:4, Informative)
For the moment, though, HSS is unfinished business. As night must follow day, there are Defense Department applications. Norris and A.T.C. have been busy honing something called High Intensity Directed Acoustics (HIDA, in house jargon). It is directional sound -- an offshoot of HSS -- but one that never, ever transmits Handel or waterfall sounds. Although the technology thus far has been routinely referred to as a ''nonlethal weapon,'' the Pentagon now prefers to stress the friendlier-sounding ''hailing intruders'' function.
In reality, HIDA is both warning and weapon. If used from a battleship, it can ward off stray crafts at 500 yards with a pinpointed verbal warning. Should the offending vessel continue to within 200 yards, the stern warnings are replaced by 120-decibel sounds that are as physically disabling as shrapnel. Certain noises, projected at the right pitch, can incapacitate even a stone-deaf terrorist; the bones in your head are brutalized by a tone's full effect whether you're clutching the sides of your skull in agony or not.
And then later, he asks to have a demo...
Norris prods his assistant to locate the baby noise on a laptop, then aims the device at me. At first, the noise is dreadful -- just primally wrong -- but not unbearable. I repeatedly tell Norris to crank it up (trying to approximate battle-strength volume, without the nausea), until the noise isn't so much a noise as an assault on my nervous system. I nearly fall down and, for some reason, my eyes hurt. When I bravely ask how high they'd turned the dial, Norris laughs uproariously. ''That was nothing!'' he bellows. ''That was about 1 percent of what an enemy would get. One percent!'' Two hours later, I can still feel the ache in the back of my head.
Re:This will likely become... (Score:2)
Just vandalize a talking Coke machine to get the emitter, add an amp and a battery pack, and with a basic knowlege of electronics, you've got yourself a crude "sound gun".
Of course, one could argue
Re:This will likely become... (Score:2)
As far as I know, the drinking age is a federal law and applies in all 50 states (somebody correct me if I'm wrong). Likewise, it is a federal law that states that you must be at least 18 years old to buy a longgun (rifle or shotgun) and 21 years old to buy a handgun. There is a similar federal restriction on the purchase of ammunition (18 for longgun ammo, 21 for handgun ammo).
Re:This will likely become... (Score:2, Insightful)
I fucking hate nicey-nice euphemisms! But just as "Carnivore" is still called Carnivore, rather than their new unemotional term, I expect people will still keep the "nonlethal weapon" meme despite what the pentagon would like.
Long live George Carlin.
--
Re:This will likely become... (Score:2)
Sorry! If I had any points, I'd mod you up. But instead I'll correct your typo...
I would have to say that explosives are the most abused technology in all of history.
...and use it as my new sig. Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery...Wonder if anyone else will do the same?
while the technology is cool (Score:3, Interesting)
Sounds...annoying (Score:5, Insightful)
The bit about different people in the car only hearing their own music is cool. The annoying pop machines and, even worse, PRODUCE ISLES, are just awful. I mean, I can look away from an obnoxious billboard etc, but there is no way to stop this! Not even plugging your ears, since it is IN your head!
Also, using it for emergency sirens? One of the biggest problems with CURRENT emergency sirens is that it is VERY difficult for the human ear to tell which direction it is coming from, because of the specific frequencies used. If it projects the sound INTO your head, there will be no way in HELL to know where it is coming from.
Another problem with using it for sirens is that it is important to hear the siren well before the emergency vehicle reaches you. This system appears to be LOS, so how well will that work? It would only work if the ultrasonic sounds can penetrate through surrounding houses and so on, which would be FAR worse than current sirens, as the walls of your house wouldn't dampen it! And if it CAN'T penetrate through your walls, then I don't see how CARS wouldn't block it, too; It is VERY important that people inside of cars be able to hear the siren!
Re:Sounds...annoying (Score:2)
Sure, but how do you suppose this is going to be achieved for dozens of motorists and pedestrians simultaneously, in rush hour, by an ambulance siren?
Sounds stupid (Score:2)
This gadget would be worse as a barker. It will transmit that sound hundreds of feet down hallways anoying all the people there. Can you imagine dozens of these things all trying to get you to buy shit?
Currently we think of people who destroy public equipment and hear voices as crazy
Re:Sounds stupid (Score:2)
Re:Sounds stupid (Score:2)
Easier to pull it's plug. Other rotten tricks I've seen are a coke poured into the place the cokes fall out and buble gum stuck into the coin slot. Ultra violence would be more satifying. Hunter S Thompson reports that a man who passed out on his horn in Samoa was catrated by outraged bystanders. Ultrasonic won't last long as a means of advertising.
Re:Sounds...annoying (Score:2)
Or your local police force for dispersing, say, an anti-war protest that just won't disperse on its own.
god (Score:4, Funny)
Reminds Me Of That One Futurama... (Score:5, Funny)
Fry: So you're telling me they broadcast commercials into people's dreams?
Leela: Of course.
Fry: But, how is that possible?
Farnsworth: It's very simple. The ad gets into your brain just like this liquid gets into this egg. [He holds up an egg and injects it with liquid. The egg explodes.] Although in reality it's not liquid, but gamma radiation.
Fry: That's awful. It's like brainwashing.
Leela: Didn't you have ads in the 20th century?
Fry: Well sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio. And in magazines. And movies. And at ball games and on buses and milk cartons and t-shirts and written on the sky. But not in dreams. No siree!
Re:Reminds Me Of That One Futurama... (Score:2, Funny)
Amy: We all have ads in our dreams, Fry. But you don't see us rushing out to buy brand name merchandise at low, low prices. . .
*pause*
Then we all went shopping.
conversely (Score:5, Interesting)
Well said (Score:2, Insightful)
its like in deer hunter... (Score:2, Funny)
I'm sceptical about some of the uses mentioned... (Score:5, Insightful)
Dangerous (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Dangerous (Score:2)
Freeee Dooonutts.... Baack at the Staaation....
Seriously cool (Score:5, Interesting)
One question... (Score:2)
Elanor White is RIGHT! (Score:2)
Oh, Elanor, I KNEW you were right, but now I have proof! I'd better start some of your DIY projects [raven1.net] NOW! (search on "Diary #134" for her plans to make a cap to simulate EW weapons from common household items!)
Like Elanor says: "Skeptics: You must explain ALL occurrences taken together as a complete SET, or you have explained NONE of them." Go, Girl!
(/chuckle)
*Waves hands* (Score:5, Funny)
In the airport (Score:2)
Luckily I had headphones (at least until my laptop ran out of battery.. ugh!).
Advertising use is abuse? (Score:2, Insightful)
I've read a couple of posts that suggest the reader would likely hunt out and smash the offending advertising emitter using this technology. I'd suggest that you'd even have the legal right to do so!
This technology creates the offending sound 'in your head'. Litteraly, the sound is created by the resonating waves heading your eardrum or bones in your ear. This is as close to abuse as you can get, imho. You can't turn away or tune it out.
It's one thing for an ad to sit there waiting to be looked at,
domestic disturbances (Score:2, Funny)
So... torture noise. (Score:2)
Nail on blackboard
White noise
Perfect sine tone, but damn loud
'You Suck' over and over again
N-Sync
Applications (Score:3, Interesting)
The other direction, the steerable microphone with strong off-axis noise rejection, has been around for years. I have one, and it's not a big parabolic reflector; it's four small microphones and a DSP. Combine that with the ultrasonic speaker and you have a hands-free phone that's useful in office environments. You could probably mount the microphones on the speaker, because the outgoing signal is ultrasonic until the impedance of the air downconverts it. So the outgoing audio can be filtered out from the microphones.
DRM? (Score:3, Funny)
Got one at Work (Score:5, Interesting)
It's really fun to aim it out the window of our building at passing people below. (God speaking to them, etc)
Combined with face recognition (Score:2)
triggering a proximity detector, then hearing what you alone hear -- the plink of ice cubes and the invocation,
''Wouldn't a Coke taste great right about now?''.
If you recognize the face of a person within the "target" area you could target a personal message.
From a Coke machine to a known customer: "Hi Bob, It's Tuesday! You always buy a Coke on Tuesday!"
From a hacked Coke machine at a sleazy
You can license HSS technology here (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.atcsd.com/tl_hss.html [atcsd.com]
(Includes data sheet, white paper, FAQ, etc...)
The voice of God... (Score:3, Funny)
Rod: How did you get in my head?
Bart: Whaddya mean, how did I get in your head? I created the universe! Stupid kid.
Todd: Forgive my brother. We believe you.
Bart: Talk is cheap. Perhaps I'll test a guy's faith. Walk through the wall! I will remove it for you.
Rod: [thud]
Bart: Ha ha ha.
Todd: What do you want from us?
Bart: I got a job for you. Bring forth all the cookies from your kitchen and leave them on the Simpsons' porch.
Rod: But those cookies belong to our parents.
Bart: Ugh! Look, do you want a happy God or a vengeful God?
Todd: Happy God.
Bart: Then quit flapping your lip and make with the cookies!
Todd+Rod: Yes, sir!
crush crush crush! (Score:2)
Look at you! I'm beaming sounds into your head! Hah hah hah!
Watch the suicide rate... (Score:2)
BTW what are the military applications of this? What's to stop them from making someone's head explode? I think the unstoppable noise would probably be the most annoying. How do you put brainplugs in?
Applications? (Score:2, Interesting)
7.1 anyone? (Score:2)
This is getting insane. Anyone know some companies that produce sound-cancelling hardware I can invest in? I have a feeling about something...
Re: (Score:2)
Imagine a Knicks game... (Score:2)
Oh No!! (Score:2)
I want one of these in my car (Score:3, Insightful)
- Hey dude, your tire's flat
- Go home, or learn where the accelerator pedal is
- You moron, speed up
- Do you know how I can get to Chestnut St. ?
- Yo mamma's fat
and direct it to a car.
I've heard this system in person (Score:2, Informative)
There are many saying how it's an invasion of personal space, etc. Talking to the people who presented it they pointed out how a loudspeaker blares out over a large area. This system would be projected only in the area near a vending machine, sto
The first time this happens to me (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm sure that this 'sounds' like great tech to advertisers. It's too bad I will be forced to direct it at you at your home, work, and anywhere you go. I won't be gentle.
I have a right to silence in 'my head' and will defend that right like a crazy motherfucker hearing voices.
Got it, Madison Ave?
Re:The first time this happens to me (Score:3, Insightful)
tin foil hats!!! (Score:3, Funny)
Nevermind, I found one. (Score:2, Informative)
Without editing it, you can play it backwards in the Quicktime Player by pressing ctrl-[left arrow], and ctrl-L will loop it.
Anyway, it actually sounds pretty much the same played both ways.
Re:Can anyone say "assault". How about "terrorism" (Score:2)
Re:Can anyone say "assault". How about "terrorism" (Score:2)