HyperSonic Sound (HSS) Promises Audio Revolution…And More

The idea behind HSS is simple. Take two beams of ultrasound, the stuff of bat squeaks and dog whistles – separately, totally silent to the human ear. Modulate the beams just right (high speed electronics comes in handy here) and where these two silent beams intersect, there will be audible sound. Soft-as-a-whisper, loud-as-a-jet-engine, concert-hall-quality, however-you-want-it sound. Take a step away from this invisible intersection point and the sound is gone. Totally gone. Consider that ultrasound beams act more like laser beams than floodlights; the intersection point of these two beams can be controlled and steered hundreds of feet away from the “loudspeaker” that generates them. A little imagination and you’ve got an audio revolution on your hands, er, in your ears.

You can get on Google yourself and find all the neat stuff about using HSS as the killer ap for music lovers, new advertising techniques for customers walking around in a store, and safe walkways where the blind don’t need to use a cane. Folks, American Technologies Corporation is selling HSS gear today, and the weapons potential of this technology is right out of a sci-fi novel. A version of HSS called High Intensity Directed Acoustics is already an ace-in-the-hole U.S. military trump card. “HIDA can instantaneously cause loss of equilibrium, vomiting, migraines — really, we can pretty much
pick our ailment,” Norris told one interviewer. “We’ve delivered a couple dozen
units so far, but will have a lot more out by June. They’re [US DOD] talking millions!” Notes the interviewer, “…the noise isn’t so much a noise as an assault on my nervous system. I nearly fall down and, for some reason, my eyes hurt. When I bravely ask how high they’d turned the dial, Norris laughs uproariously. “That was nothing!” he bellows. “That was about 1 percent of what an enemy would get. One percent!”
Two hours later, I can still feel the ache in the back of my head.”

Let’s hope cheap, simple HSS technology doesn’t get into the wrong hands.

5 thoughts on “HyperSonic Sound (HSS) Promises Audio Revolution…And More”

  1. I did.

    The new Forbes article

    Forbes Magazine
    Now Hear This
    Thursday August 28, 6:33 pm ET
    By Christopher Helman
    A new ultrasound system can zap a laserlike channel of sound over hundreds of feet to just one pair of ears in a crowd–a perfect pitch for marketers. Elwood (Woody) Norris

    (snip)
    Woody’s biggest win–until now, top secret–is the coming deployment of HSS in front of as many as 100 million supermarket shoppers a week. Disney and other big media companies plan to launch the ABC In-Store Network next year. The venture’s budget calls for some 5,600 high-end supermarkets across 13 chains to spend $250 million installing 40,000 plasma TV screens integrated with HSS emitters. The satellite-linked network will show news, previews of ABC shows and Disney movies, and, of course, advertising. Inaudible to anyone not standing in the checkout line, it wouldn’t drive cashiers batty or interfere with other store announcements

    http://biz.yahoo.com/fo/030828/c68ef9e318e5fb7d49bcbefbfe4dc944_1.html

  2. there are staggering implications of this “weapon”

    and in the hand of your average guy on the “street” it could obiously and has already been abused for example the inventor has already used it to “scare trick or treaters” what will happen when it is in the hands of malicious, greed motivated psychopaths etc and those who have a grudge against others?

  3. The techs are ALREADY in the paws of lunatics using them to frighten people — I’ve been a regular “hit upon” Victim of wrong use of the techs for 8 years l0 1/2 months….I’ve got l5,000 pages of “logs” on just what has happened to me as a result of misuse of technology…

    Place seems to be a “hotbed” for misuse — people hearing “Jesus”, God the Father, Demons, E.T.’s
    voices of dead people from funeral urns and others declaring voices told them they are”JESUS”
    Or being ordered to do some outrageous “stuff”
    Needless to say, Sexual Perverts must believe in the second coming wherein they can target victims anonymously….(and stay out of jail).

Comments are closed.