Fresnel aspherical acoustic mirrors

Does anyone know of any firms that can design and manufacture small Fresnel acoustic mirrors with a specified (non-planar) surface shape ? My hope is for a new form of hearing aid for those with mild hearing loss, in which suitably designed shoulder pads would reflect sounds incident to the front of the wearer and direct them to foci just outside the ears. Horses and other animals have wonderful acoustic reflectors. It's about time we humans devised something similar - without the user having to look freakish.

Reply to
Jim Hawkins
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Aye, as Hamlet would say, there's the rub.

Reply to
GB

Erm, not sure this would work very well. Surely even if the reflectors did work, the head turning could upset it rather. Its not I think going to be any better than cupping the ear with one hand.

Brian

Reply to
Brian Gaff

Perhaps worn as a hat?

Reply to
Phil

Yes - that might be very acceptable for many women.

Reply to
Jim Hawkins

Bring back ear trumpets I say!

Tim

Reply to
Tim+

You've actually missed the whole point about how hearing aids work, and why.

As we get older, the ears become less sensitive at high frequencies, but retain their sensitivity at lower frequencies. Hence, hearing aids don't just make everything louder. They boost the high frequencies, but not the lower ones.

You'll need to build that into your hat, or it won't help.

Reply to
GB

No - because Fresnel doesn't work in "small". For optics, a convenient siz= e is (optically) "large", so they work. For acoustics, a sensibly sized gad= get is going to be (acoustically) small, relative to wavelength. So your g= adget is going to suffer from so much diffraction as to stop it working.

Reply to
Andy Dingley

is (optically) "large", so they work. For acoustics, a sensibly sized gadget is going to be (acoustically) small, relative to wavelength. So your gadget is going to suffer from so much diffraction as to stop it working.

Very succinctly put! I'm glad you said that. (I did wonder whether the OP was confusing Fresnel lenses with diffraction gratings)

Reply to
newshound

What?

Reply to
Jules Richardson

I SAID, BRING BACK EAR TRUMPETS! ;-)

Tim

Reply to
Tim+

relative to wavelength.

May I respectfully suggest:

Oh, sorry missed the "sensibly"...

Thomas Prufer

Reply to
Thomas Prufer

Don't you think someone with massive acoustically reflecting shoulder pads is going to look pretty silly? And still a very limited gain.

Modern digital hearing aids are now incredibly good. You can't compete. The improvements in DSP technology have overtaken my dad's hearing loss. He can now hear in both ears again!

Reply to
Martin Brown

ever heard of "fashion"? Lots of things people wear look 'pretty silly'.

Reply to
charles

No. I never was very fashionable...

Reply to
Martin Brown

It's an interesting notion but surely impractical, I'm afraid: quite apart from the need to boost only higher frequencies, the angling required would make any shoulder pads a very odd shape indeed.

Modern hearing aids are small, self-contained, hard to spot, very efficient and even programmable with different frequency responses for differing conditions. And available free on the NHS. That's tough competition.

But good luck.

Reply to
Bert Coules

He'd be really popular with the ladies if he could breathe through them.

Reply to
Richard

Might I also add, possibly for the benefit of other inventors hereabouts, to make money from a really good idea, it probably needs to be patented (with the wherewithal to protect rights under the patent if necessary) and discussing it beforehand in a public forum will make a patent virtually impossible to obtain.

My one-and-only attempt to patent an idea ground to a halt for much the same reason as I suspect the OPs will: something better already/will exist. My device did something quite unique and was filled with relays and timers and tapes and wire. Then that damn fool Harold Wilson started muttering about "The white heat of technology" and between my provisional patent and the full application, everybody was doing it with microprocessors!

Nick

Reply to
Nick Odell

ize is (optically) "large", so they work. For acoustics, a sensibly sized g= adget is going to be (acoustically) small, relative to wavelength. So your= gadget is going to suffer from so much diffraction as to stop it working.= =20

but it will work at high frequencies and that's just where you need to incr= ease the signal. wavelength is 8cm at 4kHz

Robert

Reply to
RobertL

:-)

There are some real gems here:

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Reply to
Jules Richardson

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