A Speaker by Acoustic Arts could replace your in-ear headphones

A Speaker by Acoustic Arts could replace your in-ear headphones 

A Speaker is a directional speaker designed by Acoustic Arts.

They claim it to be “the world’s most advanced directional speaker” and investors have certainly bought into this with their IndieGoGo campaign achieving over 600% of their funding target.

So, what is a directional speaker? As the word suggests, it’s a speaker that has a very narrow dispersion angle. In other words it delivers sound to a highly focused area.

If you hate the idea of wearing headphones but want to listen to music without disturbing those around you – think trains, planes and other public places – then the A Speaker could be the solution of the future.

How ‘A’ Speaker works

‘A’ Speaker works by directing sound to your ears for up to 10 metres! How’s that possible you may ask? We sure did.

‘A’ Speaker creates a beam of ultrasonic sound which then focuses on a specific area, up to 10 metres away.

A Speaker by Akoustic Arts is apparently “the world’s most advanced directional speaker”. It works by creating a beam of ultrasonic sound to focus on a precise area. In short that means it can direct sound into your ears from cross the room without anyone else hearing it. The beam of sound has a range of approximately 10 meters.

What remains to be heard is how high fidelity the quality of sound will be but the investor is both a composer and an acoustic researcher, the latter being the vocation that makes this an enticing proposition.

There is a shortcoming though. The ‘A’ Speaker mixes the stereo signal into mono. Akoustic Arts suggest using two speakers for a 3D sound

There are two versions of ‘A’ Speaker; A Original and A Junior, the latter being a smaller version.

They aren’t cheap though. A Original will retail for $890 which is a whopping R 12K and some change while the A Junior is $550 which will still set one back upwards of R7,5K. Ouch! That’s a lot of money to replace your headphones for casual listening – in mono! But with the new iPhone having no headphone jack, no doubt these will be popular.

The exciting thing about the ‘A’ Speaker is this will no doubt open the door for the technology to develop better and cheaper over time.

Watch their demo video below.