New Device Beams Sound Directly Into Your Head With No Need For Headphones

A futuristic new device will beam sounds directly into your head without any need for headphones, ear buds or brain implants.

A very clever, if not a little unnerving, new piece of audio technology has been revealed by Tel Aviv-based Noveto Systems, which will allow people to listen to music, play loud computer games, watch movies and get navigation directions, all without disturbing other people.

It’s believed the device, named SoundBeamer 1.0, will have many practical uses in our everyday lives; for example, allowing workers to listen to their favourite songs or take conference calls at the office, without disturbing those around them.

You can check out the demo for yourself below:

The user can then hear sound in stereo or in a spatial 3D mode, which creates 360 degree sound around them.

In a Noveto demonstration conducted for AP via Zoom, SoundBeamer Product Manager Ayana Wallwater was reportedly unable to hear the noise of gunshots during a gaming demo, explaining:

Most people just say, ‘Wow, I really don’t believe it’. You don’t believe it because it sounds like a speaker, but no one else can hear it… it’s supporting you and you’re in the middle of everything. It’s happening around you.

Even CEO Christophe Ramstein finds it difficult to describe the bizarre yet brilliant device, saying, ‘The brain doesn’t understand what it doesn’t know’.

Settings can be changed so that the sound actually follows a listener when they move their head around. The user can even move out of the path of the beam and hear complete silence, should they so wish.

Wallwater continued:

You don’t need to tell the device where you are. It’s not streaming to one exact place. It follows you wherever you go. So it’s personally for you — follows you, plays what you want inside your head.

[…] This is what we dream of. A world where we get the sound you want. You don’t need to disturb others and others don’t get disturbed by your sound. But you can still interact with them.

It’s hoped that Soundbeamer 1.0 will be ready for consumer release by December 2021, potentially making for some truly surreal Christmas mornings next year.