New stuff in Audio research

[philboking]

They're using stuff they learned from manipulating light waves and applying it to audio:

 

http://phys.org/news/2016-08-ua-physics-laws-boost-sonic.html

[1001gear]

Yes. Now, sound that sucks; buhbye crappy musicians.

 

http://www.sciencealert.com/a-lab-made-black-hole-might-have-finally-proved-stephen-hawking-right

[UstadKhanAli]

That would be fascinating to explore. Who knows what sorts of things you could do with that on an aesthetic or scientific level?

[philboking]

That would be fascinating to explore. Who knows what sorts of things you could do with that on an aesthetic or scientific level?

 

There are a lot of things.

 

A couple, based on what is currently being done with light:

acoustic treatment - trap a very specific frequency almost completely, or make an electrically tunable trap

sound proofing - make a one way wall for sound (so sound could get in, but not out)

'blue sky' - make a sonic hologram, where sound is delivered only at a specific point in 3D space

 

The gotchas:

This all basic research, which is usually 10 - 12 years away from being something usable.

 

Visible light occupies 1 octave. If you include near infrared and ultraviolet, its about 3 octaves. Since frequency scales inversely to size, tunable stuff for visible light needs to be able to change by a 2:1 ratio (relatively easy, especially since the wavelengths involved are in millionths of a meter).

 

Audible sound occupies 9 or 10 octaves. This means if a device is frequency tunable, it might have to change its size by a factor of 1000 or so. Not so easy. And audio wavelengths vary from 1/2" to 500", so some of this stuff might be big.

One development in optics might help: There are now techniques for focusing and bending light that involves sizes which are a small fraction of the wavelength (holographic lenses for example). If these can be adapted to sound, physically small stuff might be able to do very cool tricks...

 

[nat whilk II]

I've done just a bit of reading around on some of these concepts. Just enough to see that quantum physics is capable of generating technologies that can alter materials at such fundamental levels, that a world of new materials with properties beyond our imaginations is being envisioned in various labs by various exotic subcategories of physicists and materials scientists.

 

Of course it's a long, long, hike from visions of "what could be done" to "look we can really do this now" to "and there are resultant affordable products and processes now available using this technology." The hike leaves most ideas dead on the side of the trail, and the trail meanders in all sorts of unpredictable directions, too. But some amazing stuff is in the works, whatever the specific end products turn out to be.

 

I've felt for some time that materials science is going to be source of the technologies that will radically change the everyday world in the next big technological shift.

 

nat whilk ii