Textile Transducers Could Turn Your T-Shirt Into a Boombox

Carrying a boombox around on your shoulder is so 20th century; do they even make D cell batteries anymore? But, everyone knows how cool it is to walk around in public playing your music for passerbys to enjoy. So, how can the hip urban DJ play music on the subway for their fellow passengers to appreciate, without committing a boombox faux pas that only the trendiest of hipsters could pull off?

The answer should be obvious if you read the title of this article (you did click on it) — turn your clothing itself into a speaker! Esteban de la Torre and Judit Eszter Kárpáti, of EJTECH, have created a project called Soft Sound that proves that turning your t-shirt into a speaker may just be feasible. Soft Sound uses metallic coils (copper or silver) applied to fabric to form electroacoustic transducers (a type of speaker).

For the Soft Sound project, EJTECH built a variety of their textile transducers in a range of sizes and shapes, and on different types of fabric. They don’t fully explain what the relationship between these factors and the resulting sound is, but each design they show seems to be capable of multiple tones and pitches. What the frequency range that each design can emit is, isn’t exactly clear, but a wide range of sounds are created between the units they built.

The potential for Soft Sound-esque devices is pretty huge, particularly in the wearables arena. Combining a textile speaker, even if it has a limited frequency range, with other textile-based gadgets (like sensors and displays) could result in some very cool garments!

[h/t: Creative Applications]