SpeakerDrum

Enabling haptic feedback on an electronic music instrument!

Similar to Berdahl’s haptic drum, the SpeakerDrum repurposes the diaphragm of a loudspeaker as drumhead.

A subwoofer on the bottom of a floor-tom drum is used simultaneously as microphone and loudspeaker, ditching the latency that would be introduced by any additional sensors. The loudspeaker is used as both an input and an output device at the same time, similar to a head of an actual drum.

Whereas one could directly hit the loudspeaker’s diaphragm, we mount it protected as bottom head of a standard tom-tom to prevent the drummer from physically damaging it during expressive performances. In this configuration, audio effects can be applied to the tom-tom sound, while the sound of the drum still remains natural with its full dynamic range. Filter effects can for instance dampen or lengthen the drum sound decay, or ring modulation can introduce new components to the drums sound.

We presented the concept at the 2009 AudioMostly Conference.

One loudspeaker is used as input, a second loudspeaker is functions as a reference to learn which electrical current flows when there is no external force.