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Paint on speakers

with piezoelectric paint
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The ear has a degree of spatial resolution. Less than that of the eye, but still it serves us to determine if that voice is that of an angry spouse discovering the toilet seat up, enabling one to escape via the opposite door. Computer sound needs that extra feature of controlling the intensity and shape of the sound wave reaching the ears.

I propose laying on a grid of conductive paint (or metallic foil) over the walls, then spraying on a layer of piezoelectric paint (link) then covering it with a common electrode layer of conductive paint or foil. In effect, the entire walls and ceiling of the room become the radiating surface of a giant speaker array.

The connections from that grid of electrodes are led to independent audio amplifiers, each fed by a DAC. So this is an extension of the present system of five speakers. But using an array of speakers able to generate sound and anti-sound at will, complex aural effects may be produced.

For example, the sound can be designed to be completely absorbed, thus simulating the effect of the open air.

After the room has been painted and wired up, it will have to be calibrated, so that the software driver inside the computer has sufficient information about the speaker array in order to drive it effectively. A calibration microphone will have to be placed at precisely determined places in the room and the computer excites the speakers with noise and records the resultant received waveform and computes the transfer function.

To complement the wall of web.

neelandan, May 27 2002

Piezoelectric paint http://www.students...ol/introduction.htm
Get a couple of gallons and spray away. [neelandan, May 27 2002, last modified Oct 17 2004]

[link]






       Love it. Now I can build that monster bass speaker into the roof of my car.
phoenix, May 27 2002
  

       //Now the walls have ears//   

       well, if you reverse the connections.. Now *that's* an interesting application..
yamahito, May 27 2002
  

       Just make sure you don't play the resonant frequency of anything it's painted on... might have spectacular effects.
5th Earth, Apr 09 2004
  
      
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