THE BODYSOUND™ AMPLIFIER
The custom designed and built BodySound amplifier is a small supercomputer in disguise with four on-board FreeScale DSPs (Digital Signal Processors) conducting over 200 MIPS (million instructions per second). Why has BodySound Technologies, Inc. put so much horsepower into an audio amplifier?
First of all, what is BodySound Technologies? It is a company dedicated to providing sound for the user’s listening pleasure and vibration so that they can feel what they hear. They believe that you get more from the experience if you can feel what you hear and hear what you feel. Not all music or soundtracks have a lot of bass or need to be played loud. As a result, you wouldn’t feel much in those instances unless you distorted the sound by adding bass or you adjusted the volume to potentially unsafe levels. So they decided to create vibrations you can feel from sound that you would normally only hear.
Since they wanted to provide a feeling experience with a listening experience unique for every user they had to be able to customize the experience to the user’s preferences. As a result they had to create a more flexible, capable amplifier with a number of features that are new and different. To accomplish what they intended they had to build an amplifier that had tremendous computing horsepower.
The BodySound amplifier has to analyze the sound that is playing in real-time and generate lower frequencies that you can feel. This is the reverse of what musical instruments do. A guitar string has a specific frequency when it is strummed, but the frame creates harmonics of that fundamental frequency that you also hear, which makes the sound considerably richer. These harmonics are higher frequencies that you can hear, but not necessarily feel.
Once the BodySound amp translates high frequencies into lower frequencies it needs to play them. Each chair has seven speakers. There are two head speakers, two spine speakers, two arm speakers, and a seat driver. There is also a continuous steel frame throughout the entire chair that also transmits vibration. To customize your vibratory experience you can independently adjust volume level for each of the seven speakers, EQ them individually, and also mix up to eight channels of audio signals any way you want into each of those speakers.
The amplifier contains a field programmable gate array that accommodates the user requests for mixing sound independently for every speaker. You can select left and right front channels, center channel and even left and right surround channels in any proportion for any of the speakers. This is a tremendous advantage for people who want a little more dialogue closer to their ears or who want to be surrounded by the various sound effects.
On top of that, you can add the generated subset of lower frequencies into the mix for the spine speakers and seat driver. If that isn’t enough, you can also use massage generators to mix more sound and vibration into those speakers. It’s really nice to kick back and listen to some of your favorite music and get a massage at the same time. Or, turn up the BodyNumber, which controls how much feeling you’ll get from the generated frequencies, and feel every subtle event in the movie or when the fans start cheering at a sporting event, you’ll feel as if you’re in the stands with them.
Since they had to create an amplifier that can do all of this, they figured they would go the distance and do even more. Since the user sits where the sound originates (the sound and the seating are one and the same), in the middle of a seven speaker surround sound system, why not allow the user to personalize their sound space and let the amp adjust all the volume levels automatically. So they created the SoundNumber system. The user sets a volume level in decibels and then the amplifier automatically adjusts the volume level of all the speakers to keep the sound in range.
There are even three variations as to how fast the SoundNumber system will respond to sounds outside the range. You can use the system in TV, Movie, or Music mode. TV mode responds the fastest so you are less bothered by loud commercials, while music mode reacts more slowly to not interfere with the artist’s intentions. It’s especially helpful when you are using it during MP3 playback in shuffle mode since many of the songs are stored at different volume levels. Now you can sit back and let the amp adjust the volume for you.
The BodySound amplifier resides under the seat, out-of-site and discreet. It is operated and can be programmed using the BodySound Control Link or a laptop computer running BodySound software. The amplifier will come to life when the user’s weight activates the embedded pressure switch.
The amp utilizes a linear amplifier for the head speakers and Class D (or Switching Amplifier) technology for the spine, arm, and seat drivers. These Class D amplifier chips achieve very high power efficiency (more than 90% in typical designs) by allowing each output device to be either fully on or off, and so energy losses are minimized. Because of its high efficiency capability, the Class D amplifiers operate at cooler temperatures than most other amplifiers.
It should be clear why they had to build an audio amplifier with 200 MIPS capability. Now it’s up to you to enjoy it.
