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jakubp | 4 years ago

Clickbait :( It's a device that plays back - through headphones - specific normal-range sound which is crafted in such as way as to help you locate a source of another (ultra)sound which you normally wouldn't hear. Nothing in this thing enables people to hear ultrasonic sources. They still hear sound from normal range.

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titzer|4 years ago

One could argue that people don't "hear" anything but the electrical signals transmitted from their ears to their brain. If an ultrasonic signal causes someone to perceive a noise--any noise, even if waveform-translated from the original, but in a predictable fashion, isn't it "hearing"? E.g. if we set up a chime that went "bing bong" every time the cat went through the cat door, after a while wouldn't it be appropriate to ask your roommate, "Did you hear the cat come in?"

jakubp|4 years ago

If that's the case, I could write an article "Company X developed technology that enables people to see individual atoms and hear the explosions on the other side of the Earth."

gpcr1949|4 years ago

I agree, and real time pitch shifting (as is done with the bat sounds in this work) is itself a non-trivial procedure where certain weigh-offs have to be made, so even pitched shifted it is not an accurate (or even easily invertible) representation that you can mentally pitch up. (this is not a problem for non-realtime pitch shifting where you would adjust the tempo accordingly).