The Holy Grail of Audio - Ideas needed!

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ScourggeFX

Gawd
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Jan 15, 2003
Messages
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I suppose sometimes in the near future some company will come out with a sound system that includes amplifiers, speakers, and an LCD interface. You would be able to input your exact room dimensions and speaker locations and you would have targeted sound delivered to a specified location within the space defined. You would be able to crank the volume up as loud as you want it without disturbing those outside the envelope of that sound cocoon. Coupled with upcoming TVs that could allow two people to watch two different programs at once (no side-by-side stuff), fullscreen, this would be a leap in Home Entertainment wizardry.

For those of us that still live in apartments, its good to dream!
 
That will take some time to develop and will cost more than an arm and a leg.... perhaps also a torso.
 
I'd rather have a direct input of audio/video right into my brain. Of course, the cable connecting the stream to my brain would have to be of the highest quality silver/copper/gold alloy with sexy techflex over it.
 
Well, using headphones is about as close as you can get to a direct AUDIO connection to the brain. The trick is to have processing that is sophisticated enough to synthesize ANY sound (from any direction or distance) such that your brain can't tell the difference.

An alternative, if you have multiple people in a theater for example, is wave-field synthesis.
 
If you wanted to have the ability to fully evelope the user in whatever volume of sound requested, you'd have to have some highly sophisticated white noise generators scattered everywhere to provide the cancellation. Also, consider that vibrations travel at different speed through different mediums, so you'd have to have a separate type of white noise generator for each material of you walls, ceilings, and floors, otherwise people outside would be able to pick up the vibrations.

Basically, that part is probably near impossible, at least in terms of bass frequencies. I've seen some research done for various types of 'sound projectors' over the years that sounded interesting, but only Yamaha so far has produced such a device. Note also that it does nothing to limit dispersion outside of the listening environment, it just 'steers' sound throughout the room.
 
ScourggeFX said:
You would be able to input your exact room dimensions and speaker locations and you would have targeted sound delivered to a specified location within the space defined.
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ScourggeFX, are you getting at HSS?

I'm a stock investor, and one of the companies im watching is American technologys corp, which does exactly this.

http://www.atcsd.com/

Browse through their website, and you can find some really funky and cool things, such as the omnidirectional sound that you talk about, where only you can hear it. ^_^ or Sound as a weapon......... where you play a sound to someone, and they just fall down and loose all equilibrium in their ears ^_^ !!!!!!!!!!! so cool
 
The next big step will be a new type of transducer. There really haven't been any landmarks in transducers in about 20 years. The next big step will be 360 degree radiation from the driver, sort of like a Plasma tweeter, but far more practical. Perhaps something that can pulsate a pocket of air without touching it.

Maybe a laser that can focus a couple inches away and pulsate the air with heat or something like lightning. You just place some emitters on a wall or stand and they move the focus around to create true positional audio. They would incorporate Active Surround (tm) :D

Or even a strange new material that can expand like a balloon but at the required frequency to make sound.

But, something that directly feeds into your electrical network would be the "best" we could think of right now. Same with video. Whatever happened to VR helmets anyways, they were real big back in the mid '90's then just kind of faded away, even though they would be much cheaper to manufacture now due to the cost of LCD's.
 
ScourggeFX said:
I suppose sometimes in the near future some company will come out with a sound system that includes amplifiers, speakers, and an LCD interface. You would be able to input your exact room dimensions and speaker locations and you would have targeted sound delivered to a specified location within the space defined. You would be able to crank the volume up as loud as you want it without disturbing those outside the envelope of that sound cocoon. Coupled with upcoming TVs that could allow two people to watch two different programs at once (no side-by-side stuff), fullscreen, this would be a leap in Home Entertainment wizardry.

For those of us that still live in apartments, its good to dream!
Click to expand...
You sound like a popular science magazine out of the '50s.
 
westrock2000 said:
The next big step will be a new type of transducer. There really haven't been any landmarks in transducers in about 20 years. The next big step will be 360 degree radiation from the driver, sort of like a Plasma tweeter, but far more practical. Perhaps something that can pulsate a pocket of air without touching it.

Maybe a laser that can focus a couple inches away and pulsate the air with heat or something like lightning. You just place some emitters on a wall or stand and they move the focus around to create true positional audio. They would incorporate Active Surround (tm) :D

Or even a strange new material that can expand like a balloon but at the required frequency to make sound.
Click to expand...

You think that we'll really be seeing a new transducer anytime soon? I'd personally doubt that we'll get anything radical myself.

What I would say will be the next 'big thing' in sound is digital amplification for each driver, digitally crossed over and time/phase corrected. On top of that, the receiver then would perform digital room correction on top of that the truly even out FR abberations. This is already underway [Perpetual Technologies, DRC open source project, Tact, and Meridian come to mind], and I think when it comes together in a single package, it'll really turn some heads.
 
bob said:
You sound like a popular science magazine out of the '50s.
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Ah! But the popular Science of yesteryear are the realities (and more) of today. Needs Neccesitate Invention. Theater type sounds and apartments do not go together. Sigh!

Why don't they build apartments with units that have sound insulation and isolation?
 
towert7 said:
ScourggeFX, are you getting at HSS?

I'm a stock investor, and one of the companies im watching is American technologys corp, which does exactly this.

http://www.atcsd.com/

Browse through their website, and you can find some really funky and cool things, such as the omnidirectional sound that you talk about, where only you can hear it. ^_^ or Sound as a weapon......... where you play a sound to someone, and they just fall down and loose all equilibrium in their ears ^_^ !!!!!!!!!!! so cool
Click to expand...

What is HSS?
 
A link to HSS can be found here http://www.atcsd.com/hss.html

It stands for hyper sonic sound, and its a tightly focused beam of sound where only you can hear it (much like shining a tightly focused beam of light at something).

On that webpage, there is also a short movie clip on it working in real life.

Some of them use this new transducer called NeoPlanar http://www.atcsd.com/neoplanar.html

Cool stuff. ^_^
 
yea, but i don't see how you could project any type of a soundstage that way... :confused:

it DOES look cool...
 
BO(V)BZ said:
What I would say will be the next 'big thing' in sound is digital amplification for each driver, digitally crossed over and time/phase corrected. On top of that, the receiver then would perform digital room correction on top of that the truly even out FR abberations. This is already underway [Perpetual Technologies, DRC open source project, Tact, and Meridian come to mind], and I think when it comes together in a single package, it'll really turn some heads.
Click to expand...

this, i can see happening in my lifetime... that's really where the next big gain in fidelity could come from, automated room correction, etc...

i'd be standing in line for that... of course, i'd have to hope it was a long line in order for me to have the cash by the time i got to the front of the line... :p
 
ccotenj said:
yea, but i don't see how you could project any type of a soundstage that way... :confused:

it DOES look cool...
Click to expand...

Well, they are working on certain things, and I might as well just quickly give an example

Think of a perfect square room. In the center of this room, hanging from the ceiling is one of these 360º HSS projectors. The sound is able to bounce off the ways at such an angle to hit a person in the center of the room, creating the effect that the sound originates for any spot on the wall. Takeing a few measurements, and this thing will compensate for all the things it needs to compensate for provided its an empty room. I have never seen this in action, so I don't know if they have it anywhere near "decent".......... but the thought is what excites me.

Or instead of just having several box speakers in a movie thearter, you have a "line" of this thing stuff that creates a perimeter around the room with a wide dispersion pattern.... making another "true" 360º field.

I don't know, I just like about these thigns, whether or not it comes to pass is up to the scientists and researchers.
 
ccotenj said:
that's really where the next big gain in fidelity could come from, automated room correction, etc...
Click to expand...

If im not mistaken, they already have this in the higher end audio, although its not "built into the speakers".

It connects to a DSP processor. A microphone is attached to a computer in the room where the listerner would sit, and it records specific audio signals. It then creates a frequency response curve of the room, and applies a digital correction to almost make the frequency response "flat" at the listening position. I have been told that this can dramaticly compensate for room qualities, like speaker placement, wall material, resonance frequencys.... etc. Of couse, like I said, its pricey. And if you want to "change" the FreqResponse another measurement with a mic would have to be performed.
 
towert7 said:
If im not mistaken, they already have this in the higher end audio, although its not "built into the speakers".

It connects to a DSP processor. A microphone is attached to a computer in the room where the listerner would sit, and it records specific audio signals. It then creates a frequency response curve of the room, and applies a digital correction to almost make the frequency response "flat" at the listening position. I have been told that this can dramaticly compensate for room qualities, like speaker placement, wall material, resonance frequencys.... etc. Of couse, like I said, its pricey. And if you want to "change" the FreqResponse another measurement with a mic would have to be performed.
Click to expand...

This is the basic principles of digital room correction. There's an open source project that has a few of the necessary programs you need to generate the tone sweeps and record them, and from there you can use some shareware apps to create the convolution files that actually apply the correction. foobar2000 and ffdshow both have plugins that support convolutions, which make it a possibility for both 2.0 and 5.1 sound =]

I plan on buying some room treatments for my shitty, echo-y room in my new house first, but after that I'll be getting a decent mic and phantom power to try out DRC...seems really good on paper :D
 
BO(V)BZ said:
I plan on buying some room treatments for my shitty, echo-y room in my new house first, but after that I'll be getting a decent mic and phantom power to try out DRC...seems really good on paper :D
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When I was reading a high end audio book, the author said:
Robert Harley said:
My experience with room correction suggests that the technology is extremely effective in removing colorations and restoring clarity to reproduced music. WIth room correction, the sound has a "lightness," agility, and clarity that are impossible to achieve in any other way. The overall presentation seems to have less midbass boxiness, and extreme low frequencies have greater dynamic impact. In addition, soundstaging improves because identical response from both loudspeakers is essential to precise image focus. (That's why each speaker must be toed-in by exactly the same amount.)
...
Once you get used to the sound of a system with DSP room correction, it's hard to go back."
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Boy, when I get my own home and have some money to spare, this will be one of those things to look into for sure.... Too bad that's like, 10 years down the road at least.
 
towert7 said:
A link to HSS can be found here http://www.atcsd.com/hss.html

It stands for hyper sonic sound, and its a tightly focused beam of sound where only you can hear it (much like shining a tightly focused beam of light at something).

On that webpage, there is also a short movie clip on it working in real life.

Some of them use this new transducer called NeoPlanar http://www.atcsd.com/neoplanar.html

Cool stuff. ^_^
Click to expand...

kinda looks like this too:
http://www.holosonics.com/
 
I remember reading about hypersonic sound a long while ago in Popular Science. Seems like a pretty good idea on paper, but I would have to wonder about its fidelity in preserving the original signal. I think we might see a product based on this tech marketed towards the Bose crowd, but something truly high-end would be a ways off.

Secondly, what do you do about bass? Somebody seriously into HT isn't going to give up their 115dB bass peaks, and there's no way that you can beam that 'hypersonically.'

towert7: Looking at the link, that appears to be a magnetostatic planar tweeter, something found on high-end speakers for a decent while. I've heard a pair of speakers [Onix Reference 3's] with a magnetostat tweeter, and they certainly sounded nice =]

Also, thanks for the quote on DRC. With Denon incorporating DRC-like technologies into their higher-end receivers, I think we'll be seeing VERY soon a huge push for simple products that take advantage of some of the ideas of DRC, even in the cheaper realm. It's just a question of whether Stereophile will give it a good review and get the hardcore purist audiophiles to try it also :D
 
My father works for Bayer, and they are coming out with a 1 speaker wall unit that makes the whole room the sweet spot for perfect sound......

No need to put in your room size, it auto adjusts to make it a sweet spot


soulsaver_8229
 
BO(V)BZ said:
Secondly, what do you do about bass? Somebody seriously into HT isn't going to give up their 115dB bass peaks, and there's no way that you can beam that 'hypersonically.'
Click to expand...
I'd guess just leave the sub alone. Bass isn't as directional for most things, so it doesn't need to be "beamed".

 
yea, but bass is VERY sensitive to room inequities...

now THAT would be interesting soulsaver... the whole room as a sweetspot?
 
Yeah, my father saw it on their website, that its still in production.......i dont know if it was Bayer itself or one of its subsidaries sp*.......but he said it would fit on the wall, thin like a flatscreen tv, dont know the size tho.......but said it would make the whole room fill with the sound and seem as if its coming out of no where but fill the ears of anyone in the room, no matter where they are sitting/standing

soulsaver_8229
 
soulsaver_8229 said:
Yeah, my father saw it on their website, that its still in production.......i dont know if it was Bayer itself or one of its subsidaries sp*.......but he said it would fit on the wall, thin like a flatscreen tv, dont know the size tho.......but said it would make the whole room fill with the sound and seem as if its coming out of no where but fill the ears of anyone in the room, no matter where they are sitting/standing

soulsaver_8229
Click to expand...

wonder if it's similar to this yamaha thingie?
 
ccotenj said:
wonder if it's similar to this yamaha thingie?
Click to expand...

That's what I'm thinking.

Audioholics reviewed that sound projector and found it to be pretty nice. I'd like to hear one set up myself sometime, but I doubt anyone in my area carries such a thing. It would be nice to see how true their marketspeak really is. I can see these products improving the size of the sweet spot, but I doubt that they can totally live up to the hype.
 
unhappy_mage said:
I'd guess just leave the sub alone. Bass isn't as directional for most things, so it doesn't need to be "beamed".
Click to expand...

Right, but then you don't get the isolation from your environment when you have everything rattling =]
 
BO(V)BZ said:
That's what I'm thinking.

Audioholics reviewed that sound projector and found it to be pretty nice. I'd like to hear one set up myself sometime, but I doubt anyone in my area carries such a thing. It would be nice to see how true their marketspeak really is. I can see these products improving the size of the sweet spot, but I doubt that they can totally live up to the hype.
Click to expand...

i've heard one at a local a/v place... the guy there treats me good (he should :rolleyes: ) ... heard it in a couple different setups....

in a "good room" (i.e. right sized, properly sound treated), it was postively amazing... i couldn't believe it was all coming from one box...
in a "not so good room" (i.e. awkward angles, no sound treatment), it wasn't worth a nickel... well, it was worth a nickel, but not much more than that...

really brought home that in order to go past a certain "level", the room matters a LOT...
 
strid3r said:
I'd rather have a direct input of audio/video right into my brain. Of course, the cable connecting the stream to my brain would have to be of the highest quality silver/copper/gold alloy with sexy techflex over it.
Click to expand...

And made by Monstercable!!

THAT would be awesome!! :D
 
ccotenj said:
i've heard one at a local a/v place... the guy there treats me good (he should :rolleyes: ) ... heard it in a couple different setups....

in a "good room" (i.e. right sized, properly sound treated), it was postively amazing... i couldn't believe it was all coming from one box...
in a "not so good room" (i.e. awkward angles, no sound treatment), it wasn't worth a nickel... well, it was worth a nickel, but not much more than that...

really brought home that in order to go past a certain "level", the room matters a LOT...
Click to expand...

Interesting to hear, thanks for the impressions =]

Besides the localization, which seems to be rock-solid with this, how is the overall SQ? Would it be reasonably compared to a nice pair of bookshelves for stereo use? 2.0 is my primary use of my speakers, so this issue matters most to me, so if you have any off-the-cuff comments, I'd be glad to hear them.
 
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