Re: high quality sound system for fMRI

[Marc Joanisse <marcj@xxxxxx>]

Thomas,
We have been using a custom-made pneumatic system that conducts sound via PVC 
tubes to a pair of noise attenuating earmuffs. The audio quality is good up 
to about 6KHz, which is fine for what we've been doing so far. 

We are now experimenting with an off the shelf system made by Resonance 
Technology, which appear to use a piezoelectric or electrostatic speaker 
encased in the headset, but I am not sure of the exact specs (the literature 
says simply that it is  nonpneumatic). It also includes a noise-attenuated 
microphone in the scanner, and a microphone & volume control unit so it can 
also be used as an intercom. The web site for this system is: 

http://www.mrivideo.com/temp/functionalmri/commander.html

We haven't tested it much so far, but for an off the shelf system it seems to 
work well. They claim 100 - 25000 Hz frequency response (elsewhere on the 
site, they say 20 hz to 30 KHz), but they don't provide an audiogram that 
shows how flat that reponse is, and we haven't had a chance to test their 
claim as of yet.

-Marc-

On August 8, 2003 04:04 pm, tnt@physiol.ox.ac.uk wrote:
> Hello List,
>
> Does anybody know about an off-the-shelf, high quality, MRI-compatible
> sound system that is good enough for presenting HRTF's?
>
> Any information on this topic would be much appreciated!
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Thomas
>
>
> ---------------------------------------------------
> Thomas Thesen
> University Laboratory of Physiology
> University of Oxford
> Oxford, OX1 3PT
> United Kingdom
>
> Phone: +44(0)1865-272434
> Mobile: +44(0)7816-932303
> Fax: +44(0)1865-272469
> e-mail: thomas.thesen@physiology.oxford.ac.uk
> http://www.fmrib.ox.ac.uk/~tnt/
>
> ---------------------------------------------------
>
>
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-- 
Marc Joanisse, Assistant Professor
Department of Psychology and Program in Neuroscience
The University of Western Ontario   
marcj@uwo.ca 
http://publish.uwo.ca/~marcj