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Star Trek-esque Device May Let Blind 'See'

Uses sound to activate visual cortex

(Newser) - Remember the iconic Star Trek visor that allowed a blind engineer to see? A team of scientists in Israel has developed something like a real-life version of the gadget, the Daily Mail reports. The Sensory Substitution Device turns visual information into sound that blind people can interpret after a little... More »

Can Birdsong Cut Crime?

California mayor says it already has

(Newser) - Crime has dropped in a California town, and residents should be thanking their fine feathered friends, says the mayor. Last year, he began piping recorded birdsong to 70 speakers on a highway. Minor crime dropped 15% from 2010 while serious crimes dropped 6%, the Wall Street Journal reports. It's... More »

5 Artificial Noises You Hear Daily

The labor behind tricking our ears and minds

(Newser) - You’d probably never think of sound as strategic, but engineers and developers in a number of industries have discovered that people respond positively to … well, fake sounds. But whether it’s a satisfying clunk of closing a car door, or the reassuring whirr of the dollar bill deposit... More »

Tiny Tubes May Trumpet End of Bulky Loudspeakers

Nanotube technology could allow for speakers on clothes, windows, screens

(Newser) - You may soon be able to add paper-thin speakers to that flat-panel TV, the Economist reports. Scientists have used ultra-tiny carbon nanotubes to make a transparent film that produces sound identical to a signal-carrying current that passes through it. If the technology can be made commercially viable, you might be... More »

Fans Make Racket Over Too-Loud Music

Arms-race mastering is losing musical detail, listeners and engineers complain

(Newser) - Some fans have a surprising problem with Death Magnetic, the new Metallica album, the Wall Street Journal reports: It’s too loud. Since the advent of the compact disc, musicians have pushed mastering engineers to make albums as loud as possible. As a result, a new CD like Death Magnetic... More »

D'Oh!: 17 Sounds You Know

Trademarks, can you hear them now?

(Newser) - Harley-Davidson's attempt to trademark its “Hog Call” V-twin engine sound stalled, but about 300 sounds have made the cut. Mental Floss sounds off on the 17 best-known:
  1. The first trademarked sound: NBC’s chimes, the notes G, E, C
  2. MGM’s lion’s roar
More »

Earth Hits Cosmic Pitch

Cacophonous radiation beamed from planet could easily be intercepted by aliens

(Newser) - Earth’s atmosphere produces a natural sound and beams it off into the universe, Space.com reports. The sound—a painful series of chirps and whistles—is made by the collision of charged particles from the solar wind with Earth’s magnetic field. More »

New Notes in Earth's Hum

Scientists discover more complex oscillations in planetary symphony

(Newser) - Scientists have discovered a new dimension to the sub-aural sound emanating from our planet’s crust, dubbed “Earth’s hum.” Researchers have known about the hum, detectable only by seismometers, for a decade, though its ultimate cause is unclear. They expected to find hidden oscillations, but the amplitude... More »

Earliest Recording of Sound Finally Played Back

1860 snippet, made before playback even imagined, 17 years ahead of Edison patent

(Newser) - Thomas Edison and associates might've been first to hear recorded sound, but scientists have revealed they weren’t the first to create it, the New York Times reports. A 10-second recording of “Au Clair de la Lune” made in 1860—17 years before Edison patented the phonograph—has finally... More »

Scientists Near Invisibility Cloak for Sound

Special material makes acoustic waves take a detour

(Newser) - Researchers are making progress on something that sounds right out of the pages of Harry Potter—a sort of invisibility cloak for sound. A team of scientists in Spain is trying to turn theory into reality by creating a cloak that causes sound waves to slip around an object, the ... More »

Time For Business to Listen Up

Tuning into sound yields surprising results in productivity and sales

(Newser) - Companies that aren't tuning in to the business implications of sound are missing a beat, the Economist writes. And there are a lot of them. Sound affects everything from office productivity (noisy open-floor plans diminish it) to how much customers buy (slow music makes people linger longer). More »

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