[HN Gopher] Surround sound from lightweight roll-to-roll printed...
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       Surround sound from lightweight roll-to-roll printed loudspeaker
       paper
        
       Author : prostoalex
       Score  : 74 points
       Date   : 2021-01-29 15:43 UTC (7 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (phys.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (phys.org)
        
       | Wingman4l7 wrote:
       | I suspect this is Polyvinylidene Fluoride Piezoelectric Film
       | (PVDF). Not a new material -- there was a failed Kickstarter to
       | make speakers out of this stuff 4 years ago:
       | https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/richardhaberkern/speake...
        
       | rotten wrote:
       | Soon I'll be able to have high quality sound embedded in my
       | business card. And when I open a magazine while killing time in
       | the line at my favorite box grocery store, I'll get musical ads.
       | And maybe my driver's license can talk to the cop and tell him
       | I'm a good guy. And maybe I could make some paper dolls and
       | integrate them with Alexa and have conversations with them.
        
         | dekhn wrote:
         | I got a birthday card, probably in 1983 or so, that opened and
         | made music (it had a battery, speaker, amplifier, and memory
         | chip, all stuffed inside a piece of paper). A bit bulky, but I
         | can't see w hy that tech couldn't be improved in the past 37
         | years.
        
         | medium_burrito wrote:
         | I want smart toilet paper. For example, it could tell me if the
         | scout wipe came back clean without me even needing to take a
         | look.
        
       | wishinghand wrote:
       | I'd love to have something like this over my board gaming table
       | and not only play location ambiance through it but play clips in
       | the spatial location of my players based on what they here.
        
         | prox wrote:
         | So is this feasible to create as a hobbyist?
        
         | mensetmanusman wrote:
         | Fun idea :)
        
       | S_A_P wrote:
       | I seem to remember reading about paper thin Ambisonic speakers
       | since I was a kid in the 80s reading Stereo Review. It looks like
       | this sort of thing is finally coming to fruition. I am assuming
       | that you would need to augment these with a traditional subwoofer
       | since you cant move much air with paper thin diaphragms.
        
         | Animats wrote:
         | Yes, those were first made in the 1980s. They showed up in a
         | book called "The Best of Japan" (1987), a picture book of 1980s
         | Japanese technology.
         | 
         | Probably coming soon to musical Xmas cards.
         | 
         | Now if the e-paper display people ever get their act together
         | and get the price down, this could have more potential.
        
         | Mediterraneo10 wrote:
         | Needing a subwoofer would make this technology useful for home
         | cinemas where the deep bass can acceptably be issued from a
         | single subwoofer. However, for music in surround-sound mixes,
         | it would be less ideal because those music mixes often assume a
         | full bass range is available from each of the five positions in
         | a 5.0 setup.
        
       | anfractuosity wrote:
       | Intriguing, it sounds like this uses the piezoelectric effect,
       | but could you DIY a surround sound electrostatic speaker using
       | the same kind of form factor?
        
         | cesaref wrote:
         | Well, not electrostatic, as that requires static charge,
         | stators, and rather high voltages (10s of kv) which is unlikely
         | to happen in a piece of paper.
         | 
         | The basic approach reminds me of the flat panel speakers that
         | came out of QinetiQ I think in the early 2000s, that a large
         | surface vibrating somewhat chaotically doesn't suffer from the
         | directional phasing you see with pistonic movement of the
         | surface. I'd definitely like to hear how this setup sounds.
         | 
         | I guess another interesting fact is that many traditional
         | speaker cones are made from paper, it's amazing stuff!
        
           | birdman3131 wrote:
           | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKIye4RZ-5k Tech Ingredients
           | did a fairly good video on Distributed Mode Loudspeakers.
        
       | lifeisstillgood wrote:
       | So you can almost have quiet zones and sound zones in same open
       | space.
        
         | datameta wrote:
         | Perhaps there could be dilineation zones using white noise
         | generators to separate two discrete parts of a social space.
        
           | hammock wrote:
           | It'd be like rolling a radio dial, except your feet are the
           | dial
        
       | Sebastian_09 wrote:
       | Fascinating - there's a video from the paper in a book format
       | they did here https://www-user.tu-
       | chemnitz.de/~schg/t-paper/wordpress/t-bo... (2015)
       | 
       | Looking forward to cool applications, though it's probably going
       | to be leaflets & magazin ads with sound first
        
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       (page generated 2021-01-29 23:01 UTC)