The ScienceDaily reports that Norwegian researchers have developed an echo sounder that simultaneously emits 100 frequencies. This enables the selective identification of a species of fish or zooplankton for viewing on the echogram or sonogram.
Source: The Research Council of Norway (2012, November 8). Next-generation echo sounder ready. ScienceDaily. Retrieved November 10, 2012, from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/11/121108073807.htm
The new 2013 GM Cadillac ATS sports sedan uses active noise control from Bose to reduce noise inside the passenger cabin.
Three microphones on the interior door frame on the front driver and passenger and rear driver’s side monitor the sound quality. The loudspeakers from the audio system are used to cancel low frequency noise within the cabin between 40Hz-180Hz.
Read more on the GM news web site.
Accurion have released an active vibration isolation table, the i4 series, suitable for laboratory instrumentation. vibration isolatoin starts from 0.6Hz and at 10Hz provides 40dB of vibration attenuation.
Popular Science have an interesting story of a restaurant in Berkley California with an ambient noise audio system that can be adjusted by staff, usually depending on the number people in the restaurant – if there are few patrons, the system is turned up, if the restaurant is full, the system is turned down.
Read the article on Popular Science.
Ford Europe has developed a tailored engine noise for the new Ford Focus powered by a 1.6-L EcoBoost engine. The system is called the Sound Symposer, which is a box with four chambers, two in the engine bay and two outside. The chambers are separated by a movable flap that opens when the engine is under high load, so that sound is transmitted to the outlet chambers. The system boosts engine volumes into passenger compartment in 200-to-450-Hz frequency range.
Watch the youtube videos to hear it work.
And you watch an advert for the Focus.
See also stories on Ford Media Release, SAE.
Kazutaka Kurihara and Koji Tsukada won a 2012 Ig Nobel prize in acoustics for creating a device that disrupts a person’s speech by playing back their their own spoken words with a slight delay.
Bruel and Kjaer have announced a range of acoustics and vibration courses for 2013 in the UK.
Researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratories have found that during earthquakes the air is vibrated and infrasound is generated.See the article on redorbit web site.
Noiseboard.com was started in June 2002 using the Postnuke content management system. After 10 years and several hacks, it was time to upgrade the site. It took a couple of weeks of work to migrate from Postnuke to WordPress. Most of the content has been converted from the old site to the new site with equivalent plugins.
If you have an amusing story to tell about acoustics and vibration consulting jobs, please send them to our forum.
I’ve tried to make it easier to register for the web site by allowing authentication from facebook, google+, twitter and others.
The online Popular Mechanics magazine has an interesting article on The Rise of the Fake Engine Roar. Those that have followed the history of active noise control will remember that Lotus created an acoustic system to create fake engine noise inside the cabin of automobiles to enhance the psychoacoustics perception of engine noise for passengers.