Speakers / Headphones in ICT rooms

[BatchFile]

I've been in this job almost 10 years now and I've never come up with a silver bullet for this.

What do you do for sound in your IT rooms? Speakers? Headphones? Something else? Nothing?

[SYNACK]

Here is the silver bullet that I would like to come down in cost enough to be feasible: Projected sound speakers, there are two ways of doing it, an array of speakers that renforce the audio in the middle and cancal it out to the sides MA-4 Mini Array or the more commercial ultrasound method that resonates the air in a column Really Cool Toys News: The Hyper Sonic Sound Beam!.

 

I have looked into the maths of building the array version from a whole bunch of cheap speakers but this method is limited by the differences between each speaker and a whole pack of maths.

[FN-GM]

We have speakers bult in. But also use headphones provided.

[Sylv3r]

We use a mixture of students can bring in their own headphones, but we also have some suites which includes headphones but these are collected and packed away at the end of each lesson.

[leco]

The monitors have built in sound but previously the headphones were brought out for any lesson where required and packed away at the end of the lesson. However, I've just been given an instruction to fit headphones and microphones to all the PC's in the suite. They are to stay installed at all times.

[john]

Im a bit weird, our ICT Teaching Dept have some headphone sets they bought and own and use, some subjects let kids use there own form iPods etc in the Headphone sockets on the PCs and some of our PCs EG anything HP, has a built in speaker in the PC that they can use, so its a bit of 3 really I'm afraid. As we move more and more to HP PCs to replace home-brew and local firm builds we will get more and more machines with built in speakers.

[BatchFile]

Here is the silver bullet that I would like to come down in cost enough to be feasible: Projected sound speakers, there are two ways of doing it, an array of speakers that renforce the audio in the middle and cancal it out to the sides MA-4 Mini Array or the more commercial ultrasound method that resonates the air in a column Really Cool Toys News: The Hyper Sonic Sound Beam!.

 

I have looked into the maths of building the array version from a whole bunch of cheap speakers but this method is limited by the differences between each speaker and a whole pack of maths.

 

You mean like having each PC in a soundproof cubicle - without the cubicle? Now THAT would have made a final year major project when I was doing Computational Physics at uni

[Andrew_C]

General IT suites, no provision, but students can use their own. Modern Languages, high quality, student proof, headsets provided. These are seldom damaged, and never stolen.

[powdarrmonkey]

Monitors have small speakers built in, headphones available in class sets in suites. However, from September we'll be providing a set of earphones for each student at entry, and they will purchase a replacement set if they are damaged.

[featured_spectre]

we've gone through 12 sets of 30 headphones before they finally gave in and listened to me and we bought monitors with integrated sound. Volume is set on the PC and is unchangeable without administrative privileges.

[SYNACK]

You mean like having each PC in a soundproof cubicle - without the cubicle? Now THAT would have made a final year major project when I was doing Computational Physics at uni

 

Yeap, I did some serious investigation into both methods when they were in their infancy and decided that at that point the cost of making either solution on a scale suitable for a computer suite or even a classroom was outside our price range and outside my level of ability at that point. If these kinds of things could be built into LCDs with a bunch of cheap speakers and a really smart ASIC to focus the sound I think that it would be a very good seller in the school environment. The problem is the cost at the moment due to the very low tollerences in manufacturing and tuning. A really smart ASIC with a bunch of commodity hardware would make this possible though. Just have to wait for someone way smarter than me to make it and market it.