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This topic comprises 2 pages: 1 2
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Topic: HYPERSONIC SOUND; Norris reinvents acoustics!!
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Gerard S. Cohen
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 975
From: Forest Hills, NY, USA
Registered: Sep 2001
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posted 03-28-2003 08:22 AM
How HSS Works
[Diagram here not copied] From "The Sound of Things to Come," by Marshall Sella
At the source, in the circuitry of the emitter, audio frequencies are ''stirred together,'' as Norris puts it, with ultrasonic frequencies and then sent out as a ''composite frequency'' that is inaudible to the human ear. The sound ''hitches a ride on the ultrasonic frequency,'' Norris says, which travels in a laserlike beam in whatever direction it is pointed. ''And here's the beauty part,'' he says. ''The air molecules themselves convert this ultrasonic frequency back down to a frequency that can be heard.'' So unlike sound that travels on radio waves and has to be converted by your stereo's receiver, you simply need to be standing in the path of an HSS beam in order to hear the sound.
...A sampling of the companies that are in active talks with A.T.C. includes Wal-Mart, McDonald's, Dolby Laboratories, both Coca-Cola and Pepsi, major TV networks and film studios, cellphone makers and museums all over the world, to say nothing of the world's big-ticket speaker manufacturers. The U.S.S. Carl Vinson and the U.S.S. Winston S. Churchill are now equipped with A.T.C. speakers, and the Navy has expressed interest in outfitting every carrier in the fleet. ''The L.A.P.D. wants to try it on high-crime alleys,'' Norris says. ''The Army might use HSS for decoy troop movements. And Disney is nuts about it!''...
HyperSonic Sound, on its face, has some very alluring features for major companies. With HSS, there is no piston-like action that moves the air and causes the distortions heard from conventional speakers; there are virtually no moving parts at all, so the device generates next to no heat. All of which actually makes HSS equipment cheaper. More to the point, an HSS transmission can travel 450 feet -- at pratically the same volume all along its path. Translated: at a concert, there's no need to melt the eyebrows of people sitting in the front rows. They'd hear the music at the same level as those lounging a football field away. ''A multibillion-dollar company we're dealing with wants one that'll carry for a mile,'' Norris says. ''And that is easily possible.'' ...
This is all potentially very bad news for conventional-speaker companies, which Norris insists are essentially box merchants. That is, given the fact that there are only a handful of ''driver'' manufacturers in the world, it's often merely design that distinguishes high-end from low-end audio speakers. It's never the C.E.O.'s of major acoustics firms who go pale when they see demonstrations of HSS; it's the engineers, a fact that delights Norris no end. ''Those companies make slide rules and are being offered calculators,'' he says. ''There's a smugness that goes with being a huge company. The big fish say, 'If it's so great, why didn't we invent it?' But how'd you like to be makin' buggy whips when cars came along?'' ...
His strategy is to avoid confronting major speaker firms -- for the time being. Better to start small, to look for places that currently don't have much to do with the acoustics trade. Museums, soda machines, produce aisles. ''We're gonna go after the low-hanging fruit, places where you don't yet find sound, so HSS will not be regarded as a threat,'' he says, before showing some of the flick-knife steel that had to be buried in there somewhere. ''And when we get strong, that's when we hit with a vengeance. We'll license with some Goliath of the industry -- a Sony or a Philips. Know how many new speakers were installed in 2002, from buses to boomboxes? Fifteen billion units. In'nat cool?'' ...
In reality, HIDA is both warning and weapon. If used from a battleship, it can ward off stray crafts at 500 yards with a pinpointed verbal warning. Should the offending vessel continue to within 200 yards, the stern warnings are replaced by 120-decibel sounds that are as physically disabling as shrapnel. Certain noises, projected at the right pitch, can incapacitate even a stone-deaf terrorist; the bones in your head are brutalized by a tone's full effect whether you're clutching the sides of your skull in agony or not. ''Besides,'' Norris says, laughing darkly, ''grabbing your ears is as good as a pair of handcuffs.'' ...
Nimbly holding a big black plate, Norris stands with me in an A.T.C. sound chamber. Since he's poised behind the weapon, he will hear no sound once it's powered up: not a peep. ''HIDA can instantaneously cause loss of equilibrium, vomiting, migraines -- really, we can pretty much pick our ailment,'' he says brightly. ''We've delivered a couple dozen units so far, but will have a lot more out by June. They're talking millions!'' (Last month, A.T.C. cut a five-year, multimillion-dollar licensing agreement with General Dynamics, one of the giants of the military-industrial complex.)
Norris prods his assistant to locate the baby noise on a laptop, then aims the device at me. At first, the noise is dreadful -- just primally wrong -- but not unbearable. I repeatedly tell Norris to crank it up (trying to approximate battle-strength volume, without the nausea), until the noise isn't so much a noise as an assault on my nervous system. I nearly fall down and, for some reason, my eyes hurt. When I bravely ask how high they'd turned the dial, Norris laughs uproariously. ''That was nothing!'' he bellows. ''That was about 1 percent of what an enemy would get. One percent!'' Two hours later, I can still feel the ache in the back of my head.
[The above are brief excerpts from the report in the New York Times Magazine of March 23rd, 2003, by Marshall Sella, c. The New York Times.]
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