Antena Acoustics

[NavajoEverclear]

i was at a loud concert of some sort. The music is so loud it temproraily damages your ears (obviously in the long run more permenantly if exposed too much, but thats not really relevant to the concerning issue). This of coarse makes it harder to hear the music. I realized if i lightly plugged my ears, i was shielded from the full volume, and yet what i did hear seemed to be much clearer music.

 

I wondered if this had to do with the soundwaves using my fingers as antenaes, and since sound travels faster (and more efficiently?) through a solid (my fingers being more solid than air). If that is not in any degree really correct, tell me, but if my deduction is right . . .

 

What if everyone at a concert everyone wore a type of headset, with a plugish type thing placed lightly in the ear, and an antenae of some sort angled toward the musicians (the best length for the antenae would definately have some science involved, cuz if its too large i'm sure that would cause distortion). Would this in effect, give the sound a better medium to travel through, thus enhancing the experience?

 

Well tell me what you think---- is there any potential in the idea, or do i deserve to be eliminated from the gene pool?

[mezarashi]

I'm not sure. I'll have to do some tests of my own on my speakers I would probably think that the pluggin would have a filtering effect rather than an antenna-like effect. Filtering to mean low-pass filtering, so that the lower bass can't get through as well, but again I'm guessing. Gotta try it out.

[MattC]

Vibrations travel very well through solids, but in your example, they are not traveling from the speakers, to your hands, to your ears - the waves are traveleing through air from the speakers, to your hands (and probably around them, as well, through small gaps in your coverage), and through your hands to some degree, and then again through air ... before reaching the hairs in your ear that receive the sound. In other words, you are buffering the sound, not amplifying it, as ultimately the sound travels to the end-destination in your ears through air. The only way around that last air passage would be to use something to bridge the air outside of your ears and away from your head directly with the hairs in your ears (or your ear drums), and this would cause damage, most likely.

 

It's more likely, in my opinion, that the sound was unpleasantly loud, and that by muffling it you were able to focus on the pleasant aspects of the sound. Alternately, you may have a personal preference for certain sound frequencies, and you were probably not affecting all frequences equally with what you were doing. After all, much of the low freq sound waves are probably traveling through the ground more than through the air, as the speakers are sitting on the ground.

 

Hope that helps

[Douglas]

Interesting: A couple of days ago, I saw on TV that the Japanese have developed a new mobile (cell) phone where they use the finger as the speaker. They said that the finger (used as a transducer/speaker) was much clearer than a speaker and it had the advantage of blocking extraneous interference from outside noise sources.

[NavajoEverclear]

thanks matt (and others), i suspected it was something more along those lines, (simply filtering the harsher noise, rather than really enhancing anything), but i was hoping. Still i think my idea sounds reasonable enough that i could market a product with no scientific proof whatsoever (or with a few shabby tests, and some testimonials). Thats what most of those info-mercial diet pills are, so why cant I?