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by jakubp 1829 days ago
Clickbait :( It's a device that plays back - through headphones - specific normal-range sound which is crafted in such as way as to help you locate a source of another (ultra)sound which you normally wouldn't hear. Nothing in this thing enables people to hear ultrasonic sources. They still hear sound from normal range.
2 comments

One could argue that people don't "hear" anything but the electrical signals transmitted from their ears to their brain. If an ultrasonic signal causes someone to perceive a noise--any noise, even if waveform-translated from the original, but in a predictable fashion, isn't it "hearing"? E.g. if we set up a chime that went "bing bong" every time the cat went through the cat door, after a while wouldn't it be appropriate to ask your roommate, "Did you hear the cat come in?"
If that's the case, I could write an article "Company X developed technology that enables people to see individual atoms and hear the explosions on the other side of the Earth."
> hear the explosions on the other side of the Earth

It is quite hard to enable them to 'hear' where on earth it is, not sure how you could hear it properly. (Language is not hearing although hearing is involved)

What's an example where it's not clickbait with a sense that's been 'enabled'?

For this article I'd consider it not clickbait if all the 'information' from ultrasonic is transferred to the ear real time or close to.

If it was realtime, then sure, as it's kind of implied in that phrasing. What are our senses other than machines that detect phenomenon and turn it into electrical signals for realtime processing for the brain? Do people with cochlear implants not hear?
I agree, and real time pitch shifting (as is done with the bat sounds in this work) is itself a non-trivial procedure where certain weigh-offs have to be made, so even pitched shifted it is not an accurate (or even easily invertible) representation that you can mentally pitch up. (this is not a problem for non-realtime pitch shifting where you would adjust the tempo accordingly).