We touch them, we admire them. The designed products that occupy our homes and offices affect us quietly every single day. When the sounds of the outside world filter in and cause stress or distraction to our already busy lives, look to Andreas Raptopoulos for the latest A3 technology that can be embedded into a Sonic Curtain for the home, office, and beyond.

The Sonic Curtain. Designed by Andreas Raptopoulos for FutureAcoustic.

Embedded A3 Technology Transforms Noise into Pleasant Sounds: The Sonic Curtain by FutureAcoustic

Described as a “radical product”, the A3 idea was developed while studying at the Royal College of Art. Compared to the technology within noise-canceling headphones, A3 takes noise reduction to a new, more conceptual level. His company, FutureAcoustic, describes it as “the generation of “‘harmonic output’ — or as us normals call it, ‘music’ — to subtly mask the noise in a way that the user can control on the fly.”

A3 Technology in the Sonic Curtain by Andreas Raptopoulos for FutureAcoustic.

A3’s specific audio sensors sample environmental sounds in real-time and apply the FutureAcoustic’s proprietary algorithms for a pleasant transformation into pleasant sounds, played back through speakers or headphones. The Sonic Curtain is one of a few products developed – the others being an iPhone app for a mind-quieting headphone effect and a Sonic Cube that plugs into speakers. The curtains look like a typical shower curtain, but takes the noise down 10 to 15 dB in addition to emitting algorithmically generated masking-music.

Another Innovative Application using A3: The Sonic Cube from FutureAcoustic.

Raptopoulos sees it being useful in any space that requires a partition or curtain in order to take outside noise from street level to offices nearby, but as our specific distractions may differ, the Sonic Curtain is form and function is open to quiet interpretation.

Andreas Raptopoulos is a designer and technologist who has invented a new platform for music that listens and reacts to the listener’s environment. He started working on reactive music systems in 1998, while studying at the Royal College of Art. From 1999 onwards, he has worked on very sophisticated systems, employing generative algorithms based on principles of human auditory perception. With the help of various teams of programmers, composers, sound artists and auditory scientists, he took A3 to the market after founding FutureAcoustic in 2006.