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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday June 27 2017, @06:03PM   Printer-friendly
from the I-can't-hear-you-now dept.

Most microphones are designed to emulate the human ear, hearing sounds that we hear, and not hearing ones that we don't. Scientists from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, however, have created a new sound that we can't hear but that is picked up by mics of all kinds. It could have some valuable applications, although there's also the potential for misuse.

The university's Coordinated Science Laboratory states that the sound is produced by combining multiple tones that interact with a microphone's mechanical workings, creating what is known as a "shadow" – this is a type of white noise that is detectable only by the microphone, as it's formed within the mic itself.

Transmitted by ultrasonic speakers within a room, the sound could be used to keep confidential conversations from being clearly picked up by hidden listening devices. The people talking would still have no problem hearing each other, as the sound would be inaudible to them.

It could also thwart illegal audio recordings in movie theaters or music venues, plus it could be used in place of Bluetooth for wireless communication between Internet of Things (IoT) devices.


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by urza9814 on Tuesday June 27 2017, @07:18PM (1 child)

    by urza9814 (3954) on Tuesday June 27 2017, @07:18PM (#532076) Journal

    The sound is created in the microphone due to the physical construction of the device. So it might be possible to create special microphones which aren't susceptible. It may only be audible to most/all existing microphones because they share a fairly common and uniform shape and construction. Clearly there's *something* different about the human ear that is able to filter these out, so you should be able to replicate that somehow..even if it's just a matter of limiting the frequency response. Then instead of just an Arduino connected to a speaker, they can sell a whole kit with special microphones and everything too! And they'll have to charge a LOT for them to make sure the pirates can't afford to buy one -- corporate owners and security services only. ;)

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  • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday June 28 2017, @01:59AM

    by kaszz (4211) on Wednesday June 28 2017, @01:59AM (#532234) Journal

    To make a ear equivalent just manufacture a lot's of small tuning forks that can only sense one specific frequency and it's amplitude. This can be done using MEMS technique etc. All the signals from these will then be concatenated into one audio signal.