New "soundbeaming" technology claims it can broadcast music to your brain without headphones

and here I was thinking
“what could possibly go wrong?”

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This is one of those technologies I had a feeling existed before… but that was my conspiracy nut brain getting the best of me.

I built one circa 1978 but my application was to deter door-to-door solicitors. Step on my porch and hear a deep voice proclaim, “You don’t want to be here.” It seemed to work

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so you turn it on, then every time the tracking hiccups your eyes buzz.

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What I’m getting out of this is that I can eventually build a moat of sounds to discourage uncool people from getting too close. This is excellent news. Only those that can brave the outer defensive layer of drill n’ bass, the middle layer of Napalm Death, and the final inner layer of Merzbow + Scorn can try to sell me candles.

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It would have been more convincing if the Noveto guy plugging the device wasn’t using earbuds rather than his soundbeam in the promo vid. I don’t think there is any way to get ultrasonic convergence such that there is good low-frequency resolution. This will sound worse than headphones or a regular speaker and presumably cost more.

Plus there is the ultrasonic noise polution. Just because it isn’t audible to us doesn’t mean its not audible to animals. I would have concerns using one of these near a dog for instance.

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By sheer coincidence, that’s where they’ve been testing the technology.

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I wonder how these compare with the Bone Fone?

Hopefully it will cost less. Plus now that Clearwater owns all radio who would want one?

I’m pretty sure there was something about something very similar on BB in 2007 (?), but I can’t find it.

@anon48584343
Fun fact, the rubber suspension around the speaker cone, in all speaker cones you see these days, is directly related to Dick Dale and surf music. Leo Fender (guitars and amps) would road test his amplifiers giving them to Dick Dale to play. Dick would play so loud that he would always blow out the speakers:
“Leo was using Dick Dale to test the durability of various components like transformers and speakers. If Dick couldn’t destroy it, it passed. Leo finally asked Jim Lansing to build a speaker that could handle The Showmans power and DD’s abuse. The result was the 15” JBL (James B. Lansing) D-130F (for Fender)."

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This isn’t new, but we’re starting to see it leave the lab now because there have been huge advances in the past 20 years in our ability to make precise beamforming and beam steering transducer arrays, as well as sensors for tracking people. I wonder if they’re using any kind of acoustic metamaterial, like Metasonics (apparently now renamed Metasonixx?) does?

@stinkyfoot I would assume so, that seems to be what their patents are about. Personally I find it concerning that the CEO can’t explain what they do, when (1) it’s fairly straightforward and uses known principles, and (2) his bio includes “Prior to joining Noveto, Christophe was leading Myotest, a licensor of motion analysis algorithms and prior to that VP Engineering at Logitech and CTO at Immersion, a global licensor of haptic technology.”

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Does anyone remember game demo station (I’ve only seen it at Best Buy) where you have to stand at a particular spot in front of the display to hear the sound clearly?

This is that thing, shrunk down to a baby-soundbar size, with head-tracking.

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