Abstract Spurred by recent advances in digital technologies, virtual concerts have become established modes for event attendance and represent a rapidly growing segment of the music industry. Yet, up to now, general experience of virtual concert attendees remains largely underexplored. Here, we focus on a subcategory in this domain: music concerts in virtual reality (VR). Our approach is situated within the theoretical framework of embodied music cognition and entailed investigation through a survey study. Responses of seventy-four VR concert attendees were collected, consisting of demographics, motivations, experiences, and future perspectives. In contrast to previous research, which generally identified social connectedness as a main motivator for concert attendance, our sample regarded it as one of the least important incentives. On the other hand, in line with previous studies, ‘seeing specific artists perform’ and ‘uniqueness of the experience’, were pivotal. The latter was mostly fueled by the possibility to experience/interact with visuals and environments considered as unconceivable in the real world. Furthermore, 70% of our sample regarded VR concerts as ‘the future of the music industry’, mainly relating to the accessibility of such events. Positive evaluations of VR concert experiences, as well as future perspectives regarding the medium, were significantly influenced by the level of experienced immersivity. To our knowledge, this is the first study to provide such an account. 

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10055-023-00814-y.pdf

Concert experiences in virtual reality environments

Bandwidth-limited passive suppression of cylindrical source radiation using metamaterial based acoustic superscatterers

Smart hybrid active/semi-active distributed structural acoustic control of thin- and thick-walled piezo-sandwich bimorph spherical shell cloaks

We propose a contactless and non-closed strategy to mitigate the sound radiated from an underwater source. The problem is formulated as the interaction of the source with different cross-sectional shapes (including ideal zero-cross-section sources, circular-cross-section rods, and rectangular-cross-section rods) and the acoustic superscatterer treated as a concentric cylindrical structure. The acoustic superscatterer consisting of an internal core and a coating made of the double-negative acoustic metamaterial with specific constitutive parameters relies on the coating to virtually magnify its internal core, thus yielding intense multiple scattering with the source. According to the transformation media theory and the method of images, the complete landscape has been presented theoretically and numerically of the remote mitigation of underwater source radiation via an acoustic superscatterer. We demonstrate that by appropriately placing the acoustic superscatterer nearby the source, it can achieve the omnidirectional radiation mitigation stemming from the coherent extinction mechanism. A possible scheme for the practical realization of the acoustic superscatterer is also discussed. This work may facilitate the design and application of remotely placed meta-devices for the manipulation of underwater acoustic waves.

Acoustic superscatterer enables remote mitigation of underwater source radiation

People’s living standards have improved with the development of society, and concerts have already become part of our daily lives. Though there are thousands of pop concerts around the world each year, the interaction between idol and fan during the show is still primitive and limited, and almost every stage of the concert is controlled by the host and the performer. These obstacles have a profound effect on the audience’s experience and become a bottleneck in the popularization of advanced pop culture. In this work, we present a smart interactive system for pop concerts, which helps to facilitate communication between participants. In this study, we propose a new type of light bar to encourage the active participation of the audience. We conducted an evaluation with 10 participants and found that this system would enhance the audience experience and stimulate dialogue.

Smart Light Stick: An Interactive System for Pop Concert

Driven by the demand for higher efficiency, wide bandgap devices represented by silicon carbide metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors (SiC MOSFETs) are utilizing in the power electronic converters. As an important means to obtain switching voltage information of high-side device in a half-bridge configuration, differential probes used for floating voltage measurement are presented with new challenges, such as high bandwidth and low intrusion. In this paper, the effect of non-ideal connection between the probe and the DUT is analyzed with the aim to reveal the intrusion of voltage probes. Then, a detailed explanation about the development of an electric field coupling differential voltage probe with a bandwidth of up to 270 MHz and an input capacitance of 1.8 pF is given. The probe made of a four-layer printed circuit board (PCB) has millimeter-level volume and low cost, which makes it promising in power electronics with high power density. Finally, the performance of the proposed probe is verified by simulation analysis and double pulse test.

Yue Bai

Papers

Acoustic superscatterer enables remote mitigation of underwater source radiation

Smart Light Stick: An Interactive System for Pop Concert

A Novel Electric Field Coupling Differential Probe with Low Intrusion