Stretchable, Flexible, Transparent Nanotube Speakers 76
An anonymous reader writes "Chinese researchers have realised that a sheet of nanotubes behaves like a speaker when you send an audio current through it. The technology opens the way for a range of new versatile speaker systems. A video shows the speakers in action — some are stretched, one has even been sewn into a flag."
Re:Sound Quality/Better speakers (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sound Quality/Better speakers (Score:3, Insightful)
There is a whole community of people, who tend to listen to classical music, that is EXTREMELY interested in precise musical reproduction. They know what an orchestra sounds like, and they know a CD doesn't reproduce it very well. They will get annoyed if the sound is bumped up just to sound louder.
The problem with most of that type of person is that they refuse to participate in and/or accept the results of double-blind tests to see if they are perceiving something that's actually different or it's a psychological effect.
Anyway, the main issue I'm aware of in terms of dynamic range isn't related to speakers or microphones. It's that all of the standard digital audio systems I'm aware of use linear instead of logarithmic encoding. Digital cameras are the same way. Our ears are logarithmically sensitive, and the exposure model retained from film cameras is too.
For whatever reason (simplicity, I assume?) digital audio and imaging systems use a linear model. This means that in the case of digital audio, half of the bits in each sample are allocated to the top decibel of loudness, just like half of the bits in each pixel of an RGB image are allocated to the top f-stop of brightness. So either the recording is compressed to make the most use of those bits, or a ton of fidelity is thrown away.
If you'd like to experiment with the results of this type of encoding, you can easily simulate an exaggerated version by opening a digital audio file in Audacity (or some other app), reducing its volume to 0.1% (or 0.01%, etc.) and then normalizing it. The sample quantization (and associated added noise) that results is the same thing.
I've heard of experimental systems based on logarithmic encoding, and I'm really not sure why they haven't caught on. The difference in processing difficulty must be negligible with today's technology.