wtm@neoucom.UUCP (09/12/87)
Hi, Going to the bother of making mercury filled hoses for speaker wire seems a bit extreme. I sort of like the idea of feeding the audio power amplifier's output into a pair of klystron tube modulators. The klystron beam could then be directed at the speaker assemblies. A number of neat possiblities exist at the speaker end. One possiblity would be to convert the received energy back into electrical energy to drive speakers of "normal" design. A second method might be to use a piezoelectric element in the speaker which would be directly exposed to the microwaves, and thus vibrate. A possible bass element could be a sheet of metalized plastic film which would flex due to temperature changes induced by exposing the metalization to microwaves. The beauty of this design is that it could do double duty durring non-critical listening sessions to keep the bread dip (or wahtever) warm. TV surround-sound type listeners would probably especially appreciate this feature. Advanced golden eared listeners could experiment with filling their living rooms with a variety of gases to see what effects in microwave transmission could be obtained. The above assuming that direct air as opposed to wave guides is used to transmit the signal. I don't like the idea of wave guides, as running the signal though them might cause constricted bass :-). I think the microwave speaker system is very elegant and intuitive, and the inverse procedure has already been demonstrated by the Russians to perform audio dection inside the US embassy in Moscow. The final possibility would be a direct mind link. There is some percedent for this. The fist person to try it was Aleander Bell. In a May 24, 1875 letter to his parents, Bell describes filling his ears with water and sticking a wire from a magneto into each ear. Bell reported hearing "a musical note" when the magneto was cranked. I'll bet!!! -- It's reported that procedures similar to this are in use in certain South American countries. :-) Note that the important thing here is Bell's use of the word "musical". (For more information, see _American_Science_and_Invention_a_Pictorial_ _History_. Mitchell Wilson, Bonanza Books; New York, NY USA. 1960, p. 280). Some people in the vicinity of high power microwave transmitters used in the now obsolete D.E.W. line defensive radar have reported hearing tones that corresponded to microwve pulse repetition rate. Some researchers posed that the microwaves might have been directly stimulating the audio cortex of the brain. I don't know what was ultimately decided on this one... Bill Mayhew Division of Basic Medical Sciences Northeastern Ohio Universities' Colllege of Medicine Rootstown, OH 44272-9989 USA phone: 216-325-2511 (wtm@neoucom.UUCP ...!cbatt!neoucom!wtm)
billc@prism.UUCP (09/23/87)
I guess the ultimate thing to do would be send the information to the speakers over digital lines, and have complete decoding and amplification set ups on each speaker. Controls from the main hardware could go over dedicated lines to handle mixing. :-) :-) :-)
munck@linus.UUCP (Robert Munck) (09/24/87)
In article <204600004@prism> billc@prism.UUCP writes: > > I guess the ultimate thing to do would be send the information > to the speakers over digital lines, and have complete decoding > and amplification set ups on each speaker. Controls from the > main hardware could go over dedicated lines to handle mixing. > > :-) :-) :-) Why the smiley faces? That's exactly the right thing to do, and I'd be willing to bet that it's the standard within ten years. All of those CD players out there are forcing down the cost of the necessary ICs and lasers, with so much error correction involved that very cheap fiber optics can be used. Personally, I'd like to build a pair of wireless headphones using digital IR transmission; it's well within the state of the art. BTW, there's plenty of room for various control signals in the CD encoding format. -- Bob Munck, MITRE
ron@topaz.rutgers.edu (Ron Natalie) (09/24/87)
You wouldn't even need fiber optics. You can carry the digital output of CD players on copper wire very nicely. -Ron