For your ears only

Imagine being in your living room with other people. Music is playing through a pair of speakers, but only you, sitting in that cosy armchair, are listening to the incoming sound — and no, not through headphones, but normally, via the open airwaves. For the other people in the room it’s all very quiet, there is no incoming sound at all. Enter directional speakers.

The latest in audio technology has nothing to do with improving the intrinsic quality of the sound. Instead the efforts of the industry and of independent researchers consist of “doing more” with sound than just hearing it, like for example directing it like one would precisely direct a beam of light for instance, a laser beam.

Though some sonic frequencies, particularly the higher ones, are more or less directional, sound in general goes in all directions once it is generated. In some instances this non-directionality, or omni-directionality to use a term that means the same thing, can be seen as a disadvantage, even as a nuisance sometimes — noise pollution for many.

Directional speakers are the new craze and open the door to some very interesting applications. From military to commercial, medical and personal, the possibility to direct the sound to precise areas in a zone is nothing less than a technological audio revolution. As UK-based Audionation company puts it, directional sound is “designed to target a specific listening area”.

Sennheiser, Mitsubishi, Soundlazer, American Technology Corporation and Audionation are some of the companies working on the new technology. Some haven’t yet really commercialised their products and still are in the research phase or have lab prototypes ready, while others (Audionation for one) already have such avant-garde speakers available for you to order and to buy on their website.

From there it’s only a matter of imagination. Throw a party, let the music play out loud at 120 decibels till 4:00am, all this without your neighbours even suspecting anything. Walk before a painting in a museum and be the only one to hear what the audio stream explains about it, just because you are the only one standing before the painting.

Airports will be able to make flights announcements only to relevant passengers’ zones, without affecting the other areas in the airport, thus drastically reducing the annoying echo effect heard in most airports halls. Watch your favourite TV programme without bothering the other family members in the house with the sound. The list of possible applications goes on and on…

There’s another, less obvious application for perfectly directional speakers, and this one is absolutely spectacular. Yamaha now have their YSP-5600 3D speaker ready for you. By incorporating, in one single enclosure, multiple small speakers and focusing the sound going out of each of these speakers to a specific, different area in the room, the company achieves better than surround effect — true 3D sound. It does so without the hassle of going through the cumbersome multiple wiring that is usually associated with a traditional surround audio system and that typically ends up with too many physical speakers’ enclosures encumbering the room.

The mere pursuit of fidelity and definition is behind us. Most systems, including those reasonably priced, now offer a quality of audio that easily surpasses what even demanding ears expect to hear.

From 1960 to 1980 the focus was on getting sound, in recording, storage and in playback, as closely as possible to the real thing, that is to the original natural sound. From 1980 to 2000 the industry reached its goal thanks, mainly, to computers and digital technology, and has since been able to record and reproduce sound that is undistinguishable from the original airwaves it naturally starts with. After 2000 the name of the game changed and the industry started looking at other challenges in terms of sonic thrills. Now the thrill is on, and it’s for your ears only.