Victor's HP-FXC60 ear buds: hey, the music's in my brain!
Victor is hoping to get a leg up on the competition with their new HP-FXC60 ear buds. What makes these so special? The speaker drivers of the ear buds have been miniaturized to such an extent that they can actually slide down your Eustachian tube, bristle the cilia, nudge past the tympanic membrane and wiggle through the cochlea.
Result? You will be able to play music directly in your brain. Make sure to turn the volume up to 11 to finish what you started, boys and girls. Tip your head to the right after playing to drain.
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Yes!! I've been dreaming of these things for some time now, mainly so that 1) I could attach them to an alarm clock and be woken up without waking my partner, and 2) so I can attach them to my cell phone and REALLY look like I'm muttering to myself like a crazy man when walking down the street.
Then again, eventually someone will get ahold of the frequency and start whispering evil thoughts into my head, eventually turning me into their puppet, but it will definitely be worth it regardless.
Whats the frequency, Kenneth? WHAT'S THE FREQUENCY?
Anatomy lesson -- these earbuds do not go into the Eustachian tubes; they go into the ear canal. For a photo of where the Eustachian tubes are, and why ear buds will never go there, search WebMD for Eustachian, or follow this link: http://www.webmd.com/hw-popup/eustachian-tubes
Nudge past the tympanic membrane?
Proposed tag line: "The last pair of earphones you'll ever need."
I've been wondering for years about what would happen if we got a listening technology that let you pipe signals directly into the auditory nerves, bypassing the ears entirely. I think it would then be possible to listen to sounds so loud that, if you were hearing them through normal means, would blow out your eardrums. We'd probably get a fad for ultra-loud music that can't be listened to normally.
Frequency? although there are no pictures of wires in the diagrams, I don't believe that these are intended to be wireless devices. at least not now...
This is good news for musicians. Currently if you want to have in-ear monitoring on stage, you need to get custom molded earpieces made to get around the occlusion effect (it can sound strange when you hear yourself singing in earphones). This looks like it may eliminate this need and could help bring the cost of these systems down so that even us non-famous type musicians can afford them.
#3: Humor lesson -- the extent to which this earbud enters the ear canal has been exaggerated for comic effect.
#5:
I think I'd be terrified of anything that goes directly into my brain that wasn't pain stakingly evolved through a process of trial and error over millions of years. It might not be as perfect as can be achieved with technology but maybe there's a reason that humans can't see in wavelengths up to and including gamma radiation.
The brain can presumably withstand high volume better than the ear drum, because the ear drum's designed to let you hear quiet sounds and be sensitive instead of being thick and strong but I think there might be an upper limit at which point your brain receives more input than it's happy with and that way might literally lie madness.
That and, we all think we'd like to play video games in something like the Matrix but we don't really. Games in which you can actually feel your avatar's pain (which would make RTS games awful) would suck. It's not just that you've lost a life, you're actually in pain.
It's also too realistic, there's no question that the game has hardened you to violence, the game's actually caused you to decide to kill people with your own mind controlling your simulation - literally a murderer training machine, "Want to get over your prekilling nerves? Practice here"
I feel like I might need to clarify that these ear plugs do not actually go into your brain and you can't actually HEAR anything in there. They just go really, really deep.
In retrospect, I probably shouldn't have played the joke so damn straight.
"The brain can presumably withstand high volume better than the ear drum..."
Okay.
Why should the brain be able to "withstand" volume any better than the ear drum? You might not blow out your ear drum by cranking up the volume on a wire directly to the brain, but you'd still be in pain. You understand "sound" by the brain converting vibrations in your ear into electrical signals. If your brain gets an electrical signal that says something is really really loud, it's also going to tell your brain that your ear drum is vibrating really hard and in pain, even if the signal is artificial.
@Afwings
Thanks for pointing that out. I thought I was going to have to be the one to catch the error. I always remembered the difference when a high school teacher scared me with a story of a man who was chewing on straw and it lodged itself in his eustachian tube. I still shudder at the thought of something getting stuck there.