Turn Your Head Into Speakers

Roland Piquepaille writes "A small company based in Iowa has developed products made with a "smart" metal that can turn your walls or your head into speakers. "Last August, Etrema -- an innovative technology firm nestled in the cornfields of Ames, Iowa -- started selling those chrome discs for $1,500 a pair. Called Whispering Windows, they can turn any wall, window, or drab conference table into a speaker." The author tried the technology, and even if she needed a full bottle of Tylenol after usage, said "it's not every day that your head serves as a piece of stereo equipment." This overview tells you more about this "magic" metal, the Terfenol, which is a combination of terbium and dysprosium. The article also says that we can soon expect pirated versions of Terfenol coming from China."

Re:thinkgeek?

[Aneurysm]

It says in the article, that the Soundbug is the "toy version" of the product. Cheap, but not great sound quality.

Re:Been done before?

[PaintyThePirate]

Acually, the SoundBug uses Terfenol.

Etrema is now trying to secure a major retailer to sell a $300 portable version called the Presenter, aimed at business travelers, that can plug into laptops and give any room a top-quality sound system for presentations. A toy version, the Soundbug, is available for $20 from Amazon and OfficeDepot.com. Despite the poorer sound quality, teenage boys seem to like it.

Re:ThinkGeek

[dirkdidit]

Take it from somebody who shelled out the $30 for one of those things, they suck. Not just a little bit, but a lot. The thing rarely worked on the surfaces I'd put it on and on the surfaces it did work on, it still sounded like a dying cat. Not to mention that it is about the flimsiest thing I've ever used. It broke after only 2 weeks, though I can honestly say I wasn't heart broken.

Sure the SoundBug is a cool gadget but I strongly doubt it's even close to the product quality of the $300 this company is selling.

Old news

[AndroidCat]

People with car stereos have been turning my neighbourhood into secondary speakers for years... (And they keep playing the "Whoompa-whoompa-whoompa!" song over and over.)

But seriously, the "turn your wall into a speaker" idea seems to pop up every 10-15 years. Let's see if they can get it right this time.

Does anyone still own a Bone-Fone radio? (Another idea that never quite worked.)

Been done before...

[ThogScully]

I don't know what particular metals are used in Bass Shakers [aurasound.com], but I don't really care. They aren't Sound Bugs like everyone else has posted a link to and they work exceptionally well to create a speaker out of whatever you screw them into: car chassis, couch, wall, whatever.

Specifically, they are intended for bass reproduction, but that's the only frequency domain where the material of the cone isn't having a dramatic effect on the sound quality, so I wouldn't necessarily want full range production from whatever random materials I can find.
-N

Walls as speakers in the military

[MemoryAid]

The military has transducers used on walls to prevent people from listening in on classified conversations. I've seen them installed in aircraft carrier ready rooms, where flight briefs take place. One can put an ear to the outside of the wall to try to listen, but can only hear the (usually lame) music in the wall.

This system is not designed as a speaker, per se, but it is audible from near the wall. I have no idea what flavor of unobtanium is used for these, but I suspect they probably cost at least $1500, based on the military's track record.

Re:Old news

[steelframe]

Absolutely! The first I read of this was in the '60s (Popular Science/Mechanics?). I wanted one to attach to the floor for earth shaking bass, but it seems that low end is the weak point in most of these iterations. I couldn't conceive at the time that all I would have to do was park my car in the living room.

Re:Similar to hippy technology

[wjsteele]

Wow! I forgot about that thing. I had one. It was called the Bone Phone. It was a soft cloth covered device, about 18" long, 3" wide and 1" thick. You simply layed it around the back of your neck, with the two ends over your collar bones. The controls were at one end and batteries at the other. It did have speakers, but it didn't vibrate your collar bones... the speakers were positioned above the unit, right under your ears so you could hear it even with the volumn turned down low. This made it hard for others to hear.

It was a cool radio, but the walkman idea was better, because you couldn't jog with the Bone Phone on, it would too easily fall off.

Ah... thanks for the memories.

Bill

Bone-Fone

[kantai]

Some information about the bone-fone and a picture can be found here: http://pocketcalculatorshow.com/magicalgadget/inde x3.html

Rare Earth Elements

[Detritus]

The Industrial Physicist [aip.org] has an interesting article [aip.org] (PDF file) on rare earth elements that mentions terbium and dysprosium. According to the article, 3.6 kg of dysprosium will set you back about $50,000 US.

If you look deep in one of the links...

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a discussion about how mechanical changes in the material (Terfenol-D) induce magnetic changes, which can then induce current. They mention that the same properties of the material that allow for electromagnetic-to-mechanical modulation (producing speakers) can be reversed, to allow for mechanical-to-electrical modulation (producing sensors). Thus, just as this technology can produce speakers, it can also produce sensors as well.

So my guess is (although I am totally not an engineer or physicist of any sort) that one could make sound detectors as well as sound producers using the same technology, place them strategically someplace, and use them to monitor sound sources. The speakers would then correct for the vibrational patterns detected.

They don't explicitly say that, but it's an interesting hypothesis.

As an aside, they have the most ridiculous
explanation [whispering-windows.com] ever as to how this technology works on a page about commercial advertising applications. I clicked on their link [whispering-windows.com] expecting some actual explanation of how the thing works, and instead of getting an explanation, I get a diagram of what it's doing. I hate this business-speak confusion of what and how sometimes.

Re:Been done before?

[Monkelectric]

You hit the nail on the head my good friend. These devices are called "surface transducers" and they've been around as long as anyone can remember, although the application of this metal does seem new.

The reason we haven't been turning windows into speakers has nothing to do with the lack of a flexible alloy, its because windows SUCK as speakers. A good speaker needs to be strong *and* have a wide range of movement. Glass, and other surfaces hardly move at all and thus can really only reproduce high frequencies. If I'm talking out my ass and these guys have figured out all this stuff, then they'll be rich.

Naval Ordinance Lab

[gessel]

The ~NOLs are inventions of the Naval Ordinance Lab, curiously located out there in the corn fields; famously NiTiNOL and TerFeNOL, not exactly the the most overwhelmingly original names, they do sound techy.

The "latest" material, terfenol, exploits the giant magnetostrictive effect, which sounds even more brand new, but it isn't [iastate.edu], having been discovered in the 1840s.

The high strain versions of this (and the thermally actuated "shape memory alloys") were developed in the 1940s for use in high powered sonar. They are generally used as replacements for voice coils [theproductfinder.com] and for the same reason. If you want to actuate your domestic structure, you can use a big one [beikimco.com] and keep it cool with LN2.

These materials are far too old to be covered by existing patents, so they're fabricated all over the world. Indeed, chinese manufacturers are in production [txre.net].

Perfect example of why patents aren't all good

[anagama]

• " But that's not the biggest problem. For while Etrema currently holds a monopoly on the world's smartest metal, its executives predict that within about seven years competitors will have figured out a way to make Terfenol more cheaply--or worse, to manufacture an even smarter metal. (Etrema's scientists are already hard at work developing Terfenol's successor.)"

Without any fear of competitors, the rate of research would slow down. But because there are wolves at the door, the company will be more productive and innovative. And while it might not be this company that ultimately scores the money jackpot, humans in general will likely be better off through the enhanced development speed (speakers aren't the only application - it appears to have important ones as well).

I didn't read the article, but....

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would I pay $1500 for a pair?

Get them here for $30 a piece. [zyonsystems.com]

Re:Hearing for the deaf?

[alhawkins]

Depends on the reason they are deaf. There are two kinds of hearing loss, conductive and sensory/neural. Conductive hearing loss is caused by destruction/loss of function of the mechanical portion of the ear - the ear drum (tympanic membrane) and the hearing 'bones' (stapes, incus, malleus). Sensory/neural hearing loss comes from the destruction of the nerve receptors in the cochlea or the auditory nerve itself. This system would help someone hear if they had conductive hearing loss, because it would bypass the middle ear sound conduction system and directly stimulate the sensory hearing receptors in the cochlea by bone conduction. It would be far less useful to people with sensory/neural hearing loss.