Hypersonic Sound by American Technology CORPORATION
(also known as HSS)
Comparisons with other Directional Sound
Relevant Technologies such as sound domes and sound arrays
| |
Hypersonic Sound by American Technology CORPORATION (also known as HSS) |
Comparisons with other Directional Sound
Relevant Technologies such as sound domes and sound arrays |
Sound technology
turns the way you hear on its ear
By Kevin Maney, USA TODAY
SAN DIEGO, May 20, 2003 — Rarely
is an invention so unique, so visceral and so simple that in 15 seconds most
people who experience it realize it could alter everyday life. But that's what
happens to just about anyone who steps out to the back parking lot of American
Technology Corp. (ATC) here for a demonstration of its invention called HyperSonic
Sound (HSS).
Essentially, HSS for the first time does for sound what the laser did for light — intensely focuses and channels it so it can travel great distances without dispersing. In the demo, a technician points a speaker the size of a cereal box at someone standing 100 yards away. Amid the din of the nearby freeway, the technician plays a recording of ice cubes clinking into a glass.
To the listener, the sound comes across as if it were through headphones, totally unlike a sound blaring from a distant speaker over oppressive car noise. Take two steps to the side, out of the sound beam, and you hear nothing at all. Step back in, and there it is again.
Though the technology is still years from becoming mainstream, HSS could be
used to make laptop speakers that blare music to the person in front of the
screen, while no one else could hear it. It could allow a grocery store to play
audio advertisements that seem to come from, say, the display of Duracell batteries,
yet the ad could be heard only by the shopper in front of the display. An HSS-equipped
car could play one CD for the parents up front and another for kids in the back.
Neither would hear even a whisper of the others' music.
The technology is winning believers from Wal-Mart to McDonald's, Fox television, the Los Angeles Police Department, Procter & Gamble, the U.S. Navy and Cirque de Soleil. It is looking into whether HSS could be used to communicate instructions, midact, from the ground to a trapeze artist without the audience hearing. Companies are experimenting with HSS in TVs, rock concerts, museums, war and airport gates. Imagine hearing only your flight's announcements. In 2002, Popular Science magazine awarded HSS the grand prize for inventions. The Segway personal transporter took second.
The ideas behind the technology have been around for decades. But HSS-style speakers had never been more than lab experiments — too costly and unwieldy to become a product. ATC is the first to make it practical, industry experts say. Actually, ATC's technology pops from the mind of Woody Norris, a throwback to old school tinkerers like Thomas Edison or Ben Franklin. He didn't go to college and instead learned basic electronics while in the Air Force.
Often boastful about his capabilities, he claims to be something of an inventor savant. On his Web site (www.woodynorris.com), he says, "You know how some people can play the piano, they just pick out notes? I've always had that ability with electronics."
Norris, 64, has had some major successes. In the 1960s, he worked out the basic technology behind the sonogram, eventually selling it to a medical company that turned it into the devices used to give expectant mothers a first glimpse of their babies. In the 1980s, Norris created a microphone that picks up a person's voice through the vibrations in the bones in his or her head. He sold that for $1.5 million, and it became the Jabra all-in-one cell phone headsets now on the market. The microphone is actually in the earpiece.
Norris formed ATC in 1980 as a vehicle for marketing his inventions. Around 1995, he began working on HSS. "I had the idea probably 20 years ago," he says. Norris got it from color television. A color TV screen has only three colors — red, blue and green— but tricks the eye into seeing other colors by mixing those three in the air as the light travels from the set. That led Norris to consider making sounds by mixing other sounds.
He also knew that the waves of ultrasonic sound — a far higher pitch than the ear can detect — can travel farther and stay more focused than waves at lower pitches. So, Norris found a way to make two slightly different ultrasonic waves carry information about a sound, somewhat the way radio waves carry music from an FM station.
When the waves encounter a solid object or person, they slow, distort and crash together. The result is the ultrasonic waves re-create the original sound in the air around the object, so humans can hear it. So, sound from a distant HSS speaker seems like it's right at your ears because it's actually being created right at your ears. If you step out of the beam, the waves have nothing to distort and mix them, so the inaudible ultrasonic waves slide silently past.
The wave-mixing characteristic of HSS has another effect: Aim an HSS speaker at a solid object like a wall, and the two waves mix at the object. In an ATC demo room, CEO Jim Irish plays music on an HSS speaker and aims the speaker at a back wall. The music seems to come from the wall, not the speaker. Point it at a door, and the music seems to come from the door.
The last key property of HSS is its ability to focus sound. The ultrasonic waves don't dissipate, traveling pretty much straight ahead. So sound from an HSS speaker can travel 150 yards without distortion or loss of volume, while anyone outside the path hears nothing. Traditional speakers work very differently. They send out audible sound waves that quickly disperse, filling a room with sound and weakening as they go. So the sound fades as you get farther from the speaker.
As HSS wins converts, ATC is trying to turn it into a business. The company spent the past seven years and $44 million developing the technology. At first, ATC plans to sell HSS for niche applications and other uses that don't directly challenge the conventional speaker industry. HSS makes sense only where focusing sound makes sense. Nobody is debating whether the technology works — it does. And given the enthusiasm at Sony and other companies, HSS will make its way into products of all kinds.
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