IBeam VT-200 structure-borne sound transducer

Just imagine you could hear, feel and experience music and films - just like in reality. The IBEAM was designed precisely for this purpose and starts where every hi-fi system has previously left off: with the structure-borne noise that is always part of it.

Just imagine you could hear, feel and experience music and films - just like in reality. The IBEAM was designed precisely for this purpose and starts where every hi-fi system has previously left off: with the structure-borne noise that is always part of it. The IBEAM represents a quantum leap in the field of structure-borne sound reproduction, making music and sound almost frighteningly real. You can experience sound like you've never felt it before - regardless of volume or source.

With the IBEAM in a system, the often desired “in the middle of it, instead of just there” is not an empty advertising slogan, but rather gets to the point perfectly.

Why is that?

Well, just look at this picture and imagine what the train would sound like on speakers alone. It's not about recreating a train in the living room (because how often does that happen). This example of structure-borne noise, which you know from reality, is simply intended to intuitively explain to you why any loudspeaker system without structure-borne noise can only ever be an approximation of the original.

Because with speakers alone, only airborne sound is reproduced - that's why your ear will always notice that it's just "HiFi" and not "live".

Structure-borne sound is present well into the mid-range and people always perceive it (even if unconsciously) together with airborne sound.

This is not a trick: the human body absorbs sound through the ears and through the body (up to approx. 800 Hz) and then delivers both signals to the brain, which "calculates" the sound information from them. It may sound a bit complicated, but everything happens completely automatically. This knowledge is not new in and of itself, but until now there has been no technology that even remotely allows this with this level of realism.

The IBEAM is a sound transducer that is able to reproduce structure-borne noise as realistically as it occurs in reality. The whole thing has absolutely nothing to do with adding "vibrations" like so-called bass shakers do. Regardless of whether it is a double bass, a grand piano or the singer himself: in addition to airborne noise, all of these sources always generate structure-borne noise that is transmitted to the listener via the floor. This information is missing via speakers alone - always. That's why you need a technology that can absolutely follow these signals and then transmit them without losses or inherent sound. And that's exactly what the IBEAM was designed for.

Healthy skepticism is the beginning of all good things: “Others also want to reproduce structure-borne noise,” one might think. That's true - but with one difference: they usually do something - vibrate, shake or other effects.

The IBEAM cannot be compared with any other technology: with it, music sounds with previously unknown precision and realism, it can reproduce structure-borne noise from ultra-low frequencies well into the mid-range, and even to a certain extent into the high-frequency range. And exactly at the frequency, speed and volume as it exists.

The IBEAM does not generate sounds by stimulating the air molecules like a loudspeaker membrane, but rather through kinetic energy that is released via the mounted object. The part of your brain, which forms what it hears from the sound event with the help of its acoustic sensors "ears, skeleton and skin", then interprets this signal as sound plus structure-borne noise due to its purity: we call this "Sound, not shaking™". shaking'). And that is exactly what sets it apart from all previously known technologies. In conjunction with loudspeakers, the IBEAM allows, for the first time, the observation of sound reproduction as it always occurs in reality: structure-borne sound plus airborne sound - synchronous and linear.

For example, low-frequency sound events can be experienced for the first time with a precision that is not physically possible using loudspeakers alone. You can read why this is so on QUESTIONS & ANSWERS.

But you can also see it in a completely different and much simpler way - with the IBEAM, music and images are simply more fun.

In order to at least begin to experience structure-borne noise with loudspeakers, there has so far only been one option: you have to use high and highest volumes, which then stimulate the body to vibrate through air excitation or via resonances - which, on the one hand, is simply uncontrolled resonating and reverberation, and on the other hand, it damages hearing. And yet it can never come close to the result of an IBEAM - because structure-borne sound must be generated in just the same controlled way as airborne sound.

The following example explains how important the difference is between actively generated structure-borne noise (which is to be played back as part of the recording) and passively caused structure-borne noise (e.g. rumbling across the floor):

Floorstanding loudspeakers, for example, also generate "structure-borne noise" that is emitted to the floor, which is simply housing resonances transmitted through solid bodies. The result is imprecise, blurry bass, muffled fundamentals and often room drone. This is usually helped with decoupling through absorbers or spikes - which is also very important and correct.

The situation is completely different with precisely, actively generated structure-borne noise via IBEAM. The sound gains dramatically in power, precision and clarity. At the same time, the sound reproduction can be experienced clearly and clearly as previously unheard. A similar reaction to that of uncoupled loudspeakers cannot be observed.