Sony’s Tokyo research lab has found a way to connect headphones to portable music and video players without the need for fiddly wiring. They simply feed an audio signal straight through the listener’s body.

The new system uses the listener’s body as a capacitor that carries a tiny electrostatic charge. A music or video player sends a fluctuating signal to a conductive cloth pad – such as a wrist band – and this slightly charges the wearer’s body. A pair of conductive ear pads in the headphones pick-up the signal and rapidly convert it back into sound.

To convert the small charge into good quality audio, Sony uses a high frequency signal, which is digitally switched to carry data at 48 kilobytes per second. This is enough to deliver good quality, body-rocking stereo.

Seriously, this is freakin’ awesome! First I have to say this is based entirely on a patent submission to the US Patent office, so rather or not we see this time in the near future is yet to be seen. Knowing Sony it should only be about 20 years and by then Microsoft will have already launched their version, and Nintendo will be sending the sound straight to your brain bypassing the ears completely and just making your “think” you’re hearing the music. That said, this ranks right up there with the snorkel that plays music by vibrating the mouth piece that you bite down on, vibrating your jaw, and eventually making it to your ear-drum. What will Sony think of next? Welcome to CrzyLand

-Nic

Think that was Crzy check out one of these:
• Wired News Publishes Damning Docs From EFF vs AT&T
• Dragon Skin body armor may be the best armor available
• EMS Muscle Mouse
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• The Cozy MP3 Pillow

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 28th, 2006 at 2:54 am and is filed under Music, Gadgets. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.