Hardware for ambient sound reproduction

Today’s and tomorrow’s audio and video applications put increasing demands on sound reproduction techniques, particularly because of the advent of ambient intelligence (AmI). A good sound reproduction system is generally in conflict with the boundary conditions posed by AmI, both by size as well as by setup flexibility. Hence, improving the sound quality within these conditions is important, because the traditional means have difficulties with these constraints. Various new and old means for sound reproduction are discussed as possible candidates, including ‘‘singing display,’’ and ‘‘Bary- Bass’’: the former uses a display as a sound generator; the latter a system, which maps the low frequency region (20–120 Hz) onto a single tone, and uses an extremely efficient transducer at that particular tone. Apart from the transducers, various other options are discussed to relax the boundary conditions of traditional sound reproduction setups required by AmI.