Akoustic Arts is developing a personal speaker that sends out a precise beam of audio so that one user can hear music while another user in the room or car, could hear other audio.
The company is launching with a home audio version on Indiegogo next week, but plans to offer a car audio aftermarket version to be sold through brick and mortar stores in the next three years.
Akoustic Arts is already working with car manufacturers to build OEM car speakers, but it declined to provide more information on its OEM projects.
The speakers are honeycomb shaped and made up of 200 tiny speakers or transducers. “They send ultrasonic waves that are modulated and that become audible as they vibrate into the air. It then creates a conical beam of sound of approximately 50 cm [20 inches] of diameter,” said Akoustic Arts’ Matthieu Ventelon.
The speaker can send sound within a distance of 50 feet at 90 decibels, about the audible level of a lawnmower.
“When you are pointing the speaker at you, you are the only one hearing it. If someone gets very close to you, he/she will get into the beam of sound and would hear it as well,” said Ventelon.
So, in the car, each passenger can listen to their own programming, without the need for headphones.
Akoustic Arts is a startup out of Paris consisting of 6 acoustic engineers and businessmen that have been working on the speaker for three years.
Its initial home offering is called the “A” speaker and will debut on Indiegogo March 16.
This is not the first we’ve heard of directional speakers. Harman announced new “Individual Sound Zone” technology that lets drivers and passengers create their own sound zones. It adds headrest speakers to the car’s existing speakers along with thin and flat Electro Dynamic Planar loudspeakers in the car ceiling. The technology won Harman a Top Ten Most Innovative Companies in Automotive ranking of #7 by Fast Company recently.
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I can see this much more in a commercial application rather than in an environment that’s supposed to be giving the user a stereophonic sound instead of a laser beam single speaker approach. Imagine being in line at the supermarket watching the TV at the register and only hearing it when you’re in the “zone”, rather than hearing every TV ad from different registers at the same time.
Am I the only one thinking Dr. Evil is behind this??
I could see potential for multiple applications in car:
Rear Seat entertainment (perfect for multi-source headrest/seat back)
Navigation commands
Bluetooth communication
Is there anyone on this planet left with an open mind ! Innovation is intelligent !
Perhaps it’s premature to tout this interesting technology as anything, especially given the “car” solution is not quite yet on the horizon. It’s dubious that it, at this point, is “amazing.”
This conjecture would clearly be more accurate if it were to have included the phrase;
“According to the company…”
The 1985 Feiro had dual stereo speakers in each headrest, it was a factory feature. This stuff is not new, its just hyping it up with a new twist,
P.S. yes 1985.
Military has also been on this for three decades or so, they can address an entire crowd or a single person at 600 yards and no one else in the area is the wiser.
I can only imagine how the sound staging, depth of field, and placement of instruments will be. Ugh…
Interesting for sure. But given the “laser beam” nature of the sound waves, the car environment might be the least practical place to have a directional speaker. “hey driver, I can’t hear anything”
Will follow this tech for sure.