The Echofone
by Andy Dolan
The inner ear plays a significant role in our being. It translates vibrations picked up by the skin, as well as the joints and muscles into cortical charge. This cortical charge builds, organizes and nourishes temporal-spatial organization for other senses and provides the background beat for learning. The purpose of the Echofone is to enhance the way we hear, to improve learning abilities, communication, and emotional behavior.
Originally designed by AquaThought Labs as a research tool, the Echofone provides accurate perception of frequencies which are ordinarily well above your hearing range. Incoming high frequency sound is converted to ultrasound and transmitted to transducers, which contact your skin. The ultrasound travels through your skin to the inner ear, where it is perceived as high frequency audible sound. With the Echofone you can generate sensation of sound through neural induction without any mechanical stimulation of the eardrum.
By allowing you to perceive spatial information embedded within high frequencies, music and sounds gain dimension. Much information about the position of sounds in the recording environment is encoded in the overtones. These overtones can often be above your normal hearing range. However, with the Echofone you are able to perceive them. This perceptual expansion adds a sense of depth to many recordings. For example, with the Echofone you can close your eyes and actually sense where the instruments are located in a recorded orchestration. This can significantly affect one’s emotional response to music because it involves you more within the music itself, resulting in a more profound psychologically and, perhaps, physiologically effect.
There are three times as many nerve connections between the ear and the brain than between the eye and the brain. According to Dr. Alfred Tomatis, a French ENT – brain researcher, the human ear’s primary function is to transform sound energy into cortical charge which the brain then distributes throughout the body, toning up the entire neuromuscular system.
Sound brings with it an innate, deep resonance of understanding, which transcends the illumination of light. Murray Schafer, a Canadian composer, reminds us that with eyes we are always at the edge of the world looking in, while with our ears the world enters us and we dwell in the center.
The Echofone enhances the high frequencies in audio from a variety of sources. CD’s or DVD’s mastered entirely in the digital domain (labeled DDD) will provide exceptional results.
An impeccable source of Classical recordings which wonderfully compliments the Echofone is “The Academy of Ancient Music” by Christopher Hogwood.
“Founded by Andy Dolan in January, 1994, Tools & Techniques began as a retail light and sound center operating in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. Since that time Tools & Techniques has emerged into solely an e-commerce business operating from it’s office in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. Tools & Techniques is driven by its core values in serving all customers and inquirers with integrity, personalized attention, and competitive pricing.”
Copyright AVS Journal, Michael Landgraf, Publisher, and Andy Dolan, Author. All rights reserved.