Still As Life

"A failed effort to soften the noise from British military helicopters led to a breakthrough enabling surfaces from mobile telephone screens to car roof liners to be turned into stereo speakers."

How interesting. An article on the Sydney Morning Herald outlines the results of an attempt to dampen noise from military helicopters that resulted in creating noise instead.

By the looks of it, they've created this honeycombed material that actually produces sound, and can be used in all sorts of scenario's, such as on an LCD instead of frame-mounted speakers. This works because it is see-through, and results in the sound being pointed directly at the user who is looking at the screen. So it doesn't affect what they are seeing.

It has been called "SurfaceSound" and looks like it could pave the way for a lot of interesting developments. From the article it seems like the audio quality is quite good, but as a bass player, I am interested to hear how it goes with lower frequencies and the reproduction of these frequencies, even more so, if they can produce the same feel as traditional sub-woofers, or even woofers. You can't just here the bass, you have to feel it or it is incomplete.

Labels: music, technology