Why Have We Not Demanded Front Facing Speakers For This Tonal Hobby

[Erik Oostra]

16 hours ago, Hombre91 said:

There are areas where headphones are not feasible and in those conditions we are relegated to listening to tones that are moving away from us and subjected to reflections before reaching the ear.

Good point Hombre91, I've also wondered why the speakers on modern detectors don't face forward.. I mainly hunt on beaches and in waist-deep water.. I normally don't wear headphones and rely on speakers and target ID.. I don't like wearing headphones (not even wireless ones) or being tethered to my detector.. But if I'm on a really windy beach or the speakers keep getting flooded by rouge waves, I'll use headphones with a waterproof connection to the control box or otherwise a WM08 module.. The second option keeps you untethered.. I do have wireless headphones for both the Equinox 800 and the Deus II but I'm not a great fan of either, especially the awful behind the head horror-shows that XP came up with.. I guess I'm a bit old-school in my distrust of wireless technology, especially for detectors used in the sea.. On the beach, I dream about forward facing speakers and vibrating handles.. We're nearly there with vibrating handles becoming normal as just another feature, all we need now are loud 'in-your-face' speakers.. 🙂       

[Hombre91]

10 hours ago, Erik Oostra said:

Good point Hombre91, I've also wondered why the speakers on modern detectors don't face forward.. I mainly hunt on beaches and in waist-deep water.. I normally don't wear headphones and rely on speakers and target ID.. I don't like wearing headphones (not even wireless ones) or being tethered to my detector.. But if I'm on a really windy beach or the speakers keep getting flooded by rouge waves, I'll use headphones with a waterproof connection to the control box or otherwise a WM08 module.. The second option keeps you untethered.. I do have wireless headphones for both the Equinox 800 and the Deus II but I'm not a great fan of either, especially the awful behind the head horror-shows that XP came up with.. I guess I'm a bit old-school in my distrust of wireless technology, especially for detectors used in the sea.. On the beach, I dream about forward facing speakers and vibrating handles.. We're nearly there with vibrating handles becoming normal as just another feature, all we need now are loud 'in-your-face' speakers.. 🙂       

There are potentially significant performance upgrades in this vein. I have not done any testing but i do know the brain understands sounds directed at the head better than sound moving away. Direct sound should improve pinpointing for example vs HP because it is at the speed of sound not the speed of processed sound.

It sounds like people are passing up sites where they cannot use HP, that is a limiting factor in the urban or industrial environments for example.

The water scenario is a good example where the rear facing sound waves are subject to reflections from the directional contours of the constantly changing water surface and also the varying surface  distance from the detector. 

Front In your face speakers are a worthy goal of experimentation. IMO. 

 

[GB_Amateur]

9 hours ago, Hombre91 said:

There are potentially significant performance upgrades in this vein. I have not done any testing but i do know the brain understands sounds directed at the head better than sound moving away. Direct sound should improve pinpointing for example vs HP because it is at the speed of sound not the speed of processed sound.

You make two strong but qualitative statements without any references.  Care to include some kind of link?  Wikipedia is my go to source so that would suffice (i.e. if you don't want to hunt down a journal reference -- although Wikipedia usually has those included anyway).

[Erik Oostra]

16 hours ago, Hombre91 said:

I have not done any testing but i do know the brain understands sounds directed at the head better than sound moving away.

Another good point Hombre91.. That's something I don't need to google as I experience it when detecting in loud surf or on windy beaches.. It's much better to have the sound from the speakers coming at you rather than moving away.. Maybe because I need hearing aids the idea of forward facing speakers has become a bit of a fixation, but so far I've heard no convincing explanation of why they need to face backward.. Imagine the speakers in your phone facing away from your ear, makes no sense to me..          

[midalake]

On 10/21/2022 at 9:44 AM, Hombre91 said:

I understand that Sod but for those of us detecting in areas where it is a practical matter of personal safety to forgo HP having a signal that is not secondary to mufflers, children, and car stereos for example would be very nice. 

I highly recommend that if your worried about your personal safety detecting, headphones are not going to make a difference. If you are that worried, STAY OUT!   

[Hombre91]

17 hours ago, GB_Amateur said:

You make two strong but qualitative statements without any references.  Care to include some kind of link?  Wikipedia is my go to source so that would suffice (i.e. if you don't want to hunt down a journal reference -- although Wikipedia usually has those included anyway).

Actually only one is a qualitative statement, the other is a theory. For the qualitative statement i will cite the evolutionary design of our ears as proof that our brains understand sound moving toward us better than sound moving away from us. 

[phrunt]

Dogs are cool, they can move their ears to face the sound source to better focus on the sound. 

Speakers facing away from us on detectors is all about real estate, there just wasn't room, now with technology advancements and tiny speaker designs that reason is fading away and it should change but still modern detectors are using rather large speakers, not sure why this is the case.

Some interesting reading

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doppler_effect

 

[Steve Herschbach]

It’s pretty simple. Control boxes used to be bigger, speaker aimed at you. Small pods now it’s a fight for what goes up front, and the speaker often loses to the display and the controls. If a front facing speaker is a huge priority for you, then there are detectors you can buy that offer that feature. For lots of people it’s a secondary concern, for headphone users no concern. There have been many models made with no speaker at all, especially in the gold prospecting world, where headphone use is almost mandatory. If the detector has sufficient volume, it may not matter as much as you think though. My Axiom speaker is side mounted, and I have to turn it down when using the speaker because it’s so loud.

[Geotech]

For those who forego headphones in order to hear snakes and such, I use "transparent" Koss UR40 headphones. They are "transparent" because they don't block outside ambient sound so you can still hear everything around you but the detector response is right in your ear.

I've played around with those tiny speakers and tested maybe 20 different ones. I thought they sucked and would make for very poor detector audio, even with the speakers pointing at you. It's possible they could be made better with a proper acoustical chamber design (in the same way Bose can make a mundane speaker sound phenomenal) but that's not my expertise and probably not a skill with any detector manufacturer. So the answer is to brute-force it with a big speaker, and that means putting it where it will fit, usually pointing out the back.

 

[geof_junk]

2 hours ago, Geotech said:

For those who forego headphones in order to hear snakes and such, I use "transparent" Koss UR40 headphones. They are "transparent" because they don't block outside ambient sound so you can still hear everything around you but the detector response is right in your ear.

Back in 1980 at Wedderburn Vic. Aus. most of us hated the built in speaker there was so much beep, beep, beeping going on, even the birds were mimicking the the beeps. I can see the benefit of the UR40. I made my own Earphone setup to do the same with the best earphone that were available for stereo that I could get, and made a cage (like in a safety helmet) that allowed ventilation and keep the Earphones very close to my ear.