This is the ultimate in boom / shotgun mics. And it works.

Cue the law enforcement interest in 3, 2, 1 ..... ;-P

Super-Microphone Picks Out Single Voice in a Crowded Stadium | Gadget Lab | Wired.com (http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/10/super-microphone-picks-out-single-voice-in-a-crowded-stadium/)

Andrew

One of those will just about do me for Christmas.

Incredible technology. They'll be installing this in all public places in the UK next - to go along with all the CCTV cameras we already have...1984 and all that....

Next, they will use the thing register all the breaking bad winds we are unable to depart from discreetly and levy a pollution tax on us all as we tag off at the train stations. Beware. It will be the first thin edge of existential taxation - you live therefore you have tax liability.

Back to reality now - truthfully, it is wonderful what they are able to do with technology what the British were doing with gigantic acoustic feedhorns during WW2 to detect aircraft rising to cross the English channel before they had working radar.

That thing is huge. I estimate the dish to be about 6-8 feet in diameter. Wouldn't some kind of positionable parabolic dish work about as well?

In some parts of the USA it would be mistaken for an alien space ship up above, whilst in other parts it would be a convenient target for shootin' practice.

Ya gotta love new technology!

Andrew :-)

That thing is huge. I estimate the dish to be about 6-8 feet in diameter. Wouldn't some kind of positionable parabolic dish work about as well?

This is much better. Since all microphone channels are recorded you can re-point the focus from the recorded stream dureing playback at a later time. A parabolic has one mic and will record one conversation only.

I can see the security applications of this. Kinda scary. Now you have to watch what you say - even in a crowd.

Oh and this isn't a new idea in technology. Just maybe it's application to audible range sound

This uses the same principles as phased array radar. Basically it's a time delay beam forming technology in reverse. By aligning the phases of all the microphones to the expected delay of sound arrival across the disc based on the calculated source location, the in phase sound adds and other sounds cancel.

Beam forming:
Phased array - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phased_array)
Beamforming - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beamforming)

What's amazing is recording 325 channels of audio. That's a lot of data to process!