Highlights from the International Congress on Acoustics

Audio zones in cars

Using modified speakers in a car’s headrests and a new way to filter sound, Jordan Cheer and Stephen Elliott at the University of Southampton in England have created distinct listening zones for the front and back seats of a car. The team replaced the wooden backs of speakers with rectangles of metal gauze to focus sound toward passengers’ ears. Altering the volume and time delay of certain sounds confined sounds to particular zones in a car, Cheer said June 3. The system let drivers and passengers riding in the back listen to two similar pop songs at once, Cheer said. But during tests using some