Harry Houdini ’s famed Chinese Water Torture Cell is not a pleasant workings environs . Not only does it shackle the substance abuser upside down in a vat of scary water system , it ’s also impossible to listen to medicine inside the matter .
Or at least that ’s how it was back in the 1910s and 1920s .
If the fabled escape artist were alive today , he could make use of particular submerged earbuds . Better yet , he could outfit the intact torment cell with a stunning submerged sound system . With a little AC / DC cranking in there , you know he could have shaved a solid mo off his relief valve sentence .
But of course you ’re no Harry Houdini , and you probably do n’t realize your living inside a theatrical drowning booth . Yet even outside the globe of professional delusion , subaquatic well-grounded system technology has its piazza .
First , consider the Earth of water dance . contemporise natator need to actually hear the medicine while they ’re apply their artistic production . In fact , Lubell Labs , one of the oldest producer of underwater speakers , get its start come after a successful intersection demo at the 1970 National Senior Synchronized Swimming Championships in the U.S. [ source : Lubell ] .
Lap swimmers , scuba loon , maritime biologists , cave underwater diver and underwater motion-picture show crews all gain from subaquatic sound system technology as well . How better for 18 loon to communicate on a drown Hollywood curing ? Plus , we also utilise the technology to interact with heavyweight and repel fish from contaminated piddle .
So slip into your favorite high - cut of meat swimsuit , shackle your ankles and organize to dislocate beneath the surface of somehi - fisounds .
Funky Sounds in Your Pool
Can we really hear music on the bottom of a lake or a swim kitty ? Sure we can .
Sound go through both air travel and water system . In fact , sound waves move 4.3 time quicker submersed than they do through the atmosphere [ source : NOAA ] . heavyweight and dolphins use sound to navigate and commune in the sea , and man employsonar(soundnavigationandranging ) engineering science to map undersea topography and the movements of both animals and ship .
Yet for all our submarines and schnorkel gear , we humans are creatures of the air . We evolve to serve sound data on land , so we simply don’thearas well at the bottom of a river – despite the ability of some divers to have supersonic hearing underwater .
Just debate Parliament ’s come to 1976 single " P. Funk . " As front man George Clinton point outs out in the lyric poem , the song is in fact " doin' it to ya in the earhole . " The legal wave vibrate theaudio bonesin our inner spike , an essence we callair conduction hearing . When you ’re underwater , however , flooding in the outer ear prevents a heap of that necessary vibration and essentially nullifies your air conduction hearing power .
as luck would have it , George Clinton and company do n’t just do it to us in our auricle bones ; they also do it to us in our skull castanets . We call thisbone conduction , the conductivity of sound to the inner ear through the bones of the skull . This mode of hearing is 40 percent less effective than air conductivity , but it ’s still the primary means we take heed underwater [ source : NOAA ] .
How does it sound ? Well , the limits of pearl conductivity makestereophonic soundimpossible underwater . The skull provide only a single author of sound transmission , whereas air conductivity earshot provide two – one in each pinna . But that does n’t mean the sound itself ismonophonic– rather it ’s what Stanford University music researcher John A. Maurer IV referred to asomniphonic sound[source : Maurer ] .
In a swimming pool , fast - trip wakeless waves leave the underwater utterer and bounce off the bottom of the kitty , the control surface of the water and each side of the pool . The sound reaches the listener from all directions , and the human brainiac just ca n’t action the original good generator .
The range of typical human hearing yoke from 20 hertz to 20,000 hertz . Some varieties of submerged speakers , particularly older models , ca n’t produce wavelengths small than around 1,000 hertz . To put that in perspective , the lowest and highest frequency note on a typical 88 - key piano are 27.5 Heinrich Rudolph Hertz and 4,186 Heinrich Rudolph Hertz . However , underwater loudspeaker system like the Clark Synthesis Diluvio employvoice coil technology– fundamentally an electromagnet composed of coiled conducting wire – to get through wavelengths as low as 20 cycle per second .
Speakers From the Depths
Normalspeakersdon’t get along all that well at the bottom of a swimming pond , so it should come as no surprise to learn that underwater speakers come specially design to not only deliver caliber audio in a subaqueous environment , but also to avoid shorting out , electrocute swimmers or turning to driftwood .
It ’s a rather niche turning point of the audio market place , so you could expect to drop anywhere between $ 300 and $ 2,000 on a timbre underwater speaker unit . distinctive simulation consist of a watertight , rainproof credit card speaker unit link by a length of insulated speaker unit conducting wire to an above - piss sound system . You might select to instal the speaker inside an alcove in the pool – in which slip you might habituate an acoustic sound electron lens to lead the sound undulation out into the pool – or you might just attach the speaker to a rope and dangle it into the water .
A practiced underwater speaker wo n’t go all that dandy if you use it out in the strain . In fact , it might voice downright awful . According to Clark Synthesis President Bill Phillips , a quality underwater speaker is more like a fine wooden official document such as a cello or fiddle . The audio radiates off the entire open area of the utterer rather than from a focused point .
The volume of water you could cover with a speaker varies . For example , Clark Synthesis recommends one of its Diluvio syndicate speakers for every 20 - infantry - by-20 - invertebrate foot ( 6 - metre - by-6 - metre ) section of the pool . The Lubell System 3300 Diver Recall System – mean for use on dive boats – can sound a temptress listen across an intact 1 - mile ( 1.6 - kilometer ) underwater radius , assuming optimal conditions . Dive speakers such as these enable instructors to communicate with other divers , but they can also blare funky beats for man and fish alike .
The Sound of Underwater Music
Jacques Cousteau may have knight it " the silent humankind , " but apparently he never thought to crank " Yellow Submarine " from the bottom of the Calypso .
Each year , divers meet on Florida ’s Looe Key Reef for the Underwater Music Festival , and gravy boat - mounted Lubellspeakerscrank the tunes for more than 300 divers and snorkelers [ source : Lower Keys Chamber of Commerce ] .
But hey , it ’s not all classic tilt and rowdy scuba diver . French composer Michel Redolfi is something of a specialist in subaquatic euphony . His albums combine instinctive ocean sounds with electronic ambiance to create soundscapes specifically designed for submersed program .
Redolfi ’s concerts , as you might imagine , typically take place subaqueous – often in swimming consortium , but also in the ocean itself . His 1984 album " Sonic water " includes hydrophone recordings of an original electronic firearm broadcasted through the water system off the seacoast of La Jolla , Calif. In collaboration with music engineer Daniel Harris , Redolfi debut multiple melodious instrument project alone for use in an underwater environment . These include the SOSNO underwater percussion instrument ( named after its designer ) and the electronic DUCS ( Digital Underwater Controller System ) . His 1992 opera house " Chrysalis " even regard a treble submerge in a 2 - net ton plastic bubble .
And yet Redolfi is n’t the only artist to dabble in the existence of underwater opera . Back in 2009 , Juliana Snapper debuted in an opera house titled " You Who Will egress from the Flood . " The carrying out demand place in a Manchester , England , swim pool , with Snapper using " mouth - to - body of water " singing that required acute research and " hours submerged in my bathtub and borrowed pools " [ generator : Helmreich ] .
Not to be outdone , German swimmer - turned - opera house - singer Claudia Herr debuted her underwater opera " AquAria Palaoa " in Berlin on May 1 , 2011 . The ruined piece of music is a combination of opera house , submersed musical carrying into action and synchronize swim .
And yet all Harry Houdini would have heard inside his Chinese Water Torture Cell was the muddy speech sound of the remote audience and the clink of his chains .
I affectionately want to play a bacta tank reference into this article , but alas there ’s only so much way for silliness in an article . This is especially reliable when the science involved is so fascinating . I have to admit , I was n’t expect this one to put forward my creative thinker all that much , but I found the science of underwater acoustics really fascinating .
I ’d wish to thankClark SynthesisPresident Bill Phillips for taking the prison term to confabulate with me about underwater sound system technology . He was nice enough to unbend me out about some of the fine pointedness . When personally testing out speaker installing for the U.S. Synchronized Swimming Team , he likes to act some Vivaldi on both air and underwater talker , dipping his head in and out of the water until the sound timber in the pool matches that at poolside . I have sex that commitment to effectual quality .
Oh , and if you ’d like to explore the underwater sounds of composer Michel Redolfi , I encourage you to research the instrumentalist ’s prescribed World Wide Web Sir Frederick Handley Page . you’re able to also sample his phone on hisYouTube page .
