A company called Soundhawk is about to release their product Scoop which is an earpiece that looks similar to a bluetooth headset, but far more powerful. The device is intended to augment your hearing and remove background noise from speech.
The web site engadget.com has a good review article of the product.
For those of you into retro TV series, you may remember The Bionic Woman (a spin-off series from The Six Million Dollar Man), who had a bionic ear to help her hear the quietest sounds.
HARMAN and Lotus Engineering have worked together to create some interesting noise cancellation and generating (!) technology for automotive applications, and marketed under the brand name of HALOsonic. Lotus Engineering have been in the active noise control and sound generation game for a while. They’ve made electronic audio systems to give car driver the impression of a range of customised engine sounds at the push of a button. HALOsonic make audio systems to:
NASA has created an account on SoundCloud and uploaded over 60 classic audio samples including, “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”, “the Eagle has landed” and “Houston, we have a problem.”
The Nigerian city of Lagos has banned the use of car horns for one day, or drivers face a £75 fine. “The objective of the day is to reduce noise pollution,” Lagos state government’s transport commissioner, Kayode Opeifa, said. “The exercise will create awareness that horn misuse and abuse is very dangerous to health and the environment.”
Read the article on The Guardian web site.
Seven scientists and engineers from CERN have created music and performed based on the sonification of data obtained by four detectors – ALICE, ATLAS, CMS and LHCb – during the Large Hadron Collider run 2010-2013.
Read the full article and hear their music on the CERN web site.
Wired.com has an article on several expensive headphones, 9 of the World’s Most Outrageously Expensive Headphones, some are $5,500 ??
It has got me puzzled why consumer grade headphones are expensive, after all they are 2 speakers, a headband, and a chord. It was announced this week that Apple will be buying Beats for $3.4b (see SMH article) !
Japanese tyre manufacturer Yokohama has a press release that they have been working with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), to model the radiation of sound from tyres. They claim to have conducted the world’s first simulation of turbulence around a tire rolling on a road surface and the sound that is generated.
Researchers in the department of psychology at University of Iowa have found that humans have an auditory memory of only about 4 to 8 seconds.
Their paper is available online.
The CES 2014 convention is underway in Las Vegas and a bevy of new gadgets are on display. One audio product that has shone out is ClearView’s Clio loudspeakers. The speaker comprises a transparent curved perspex sheet that is mounted in a black base that houses the drive mechanism. The curve sheet acts as the sound radiator and is driven by piezo-electric actuators on the bottom edge of the sheet. This type of drive mechanism is patented and called EdgeMotion.
Here is a photo from ClearView’s media gallery. Try to find their speaker!
On a related topic of audio, at the bottom of the ClearView’s web page is a selected history of the development of audio technology which is worth a quick look. You’ll see familiar company names like Siemens, Lansing, Jensen, Kloss, Thiele and Small, and others. Of course the history of the development of audio technology is much more detailed and many many developments are missing, but their selected list is interesting nonetheless.
The Verge web site has a news article about a ‘Magnetophone’ sculpture that generates sound. The device comprises electro-magnets, strings, sound boards, and is controlled by an Arduino board.