New Hypersonic speaker - virtual 5.1? (1 Viewer)

[Terry Wysocki]

I just heard a radio talk show in Los Angeles talking about a company in San Diego that has invented something called a hypersonic speaker. From what I heard, it's not a cone type speaker, but rather a tube that emits ultra-high frequency sound. This sound is above human hearing and is extremely directional. This tube pumps the sound out to a location in space then (I guess through phase shifting techniques) causes distortion patterns in it to generate sub-sonic sound at that point in space. The announcer said he had heard it and it was an incredible illusion that the sound was coming from just a point in the middle of the room and with excellent realism. The claim was that this would revolutionize the movie theater and home theater market because you could synthesize the surround system at will. Further, the manufacturer stated it would be selling soon for a few hundred dollars!
Has anyone else heard about this technology? Is it worthy (or promising) for high quality HT application?
NEWSFLASH: I just found this link explaining more about the speaker:
Business Week Website

 

[Steve-T]

I heard the same show.
Just to add further understanding, the company CEO drew a comparison to a spot light. With a spot light you can beam the light to any place in the room. Thus if the sound is directed behind you, you hear the sound behind you.
My question is what happens if you or an object is in the line of sight?
The radio show is one I listen to once in a while on KNX 1070, it is pretty good, but I am not sure that the host is a audio enthusiast. The show is a business and tech show. I would like to see what the quality of the sound is like.