>> I saw this and flashed on that for reasons which should be
>> obvious.
>>
>> <
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nH-3TdWI-yI>
>>
>> Note that the performer (Xyla Foxlin) also made the violin and
>> at least one of the speakers. She played lightning violin as
>> her "talent" for Miss Cleveland. She won.
>>
>> Also note--if you have not seen this sort of thing before, the
>> electric arcs are not just for show, they are generating the
>> sound you hear. In person they are _loud_.
Yup, the technical term is "plasma arc speaker", the arc generates
plasma that displace air, which IS sound.
These days you can buy ~$50 "bluetooth musical tesla coil" on
AliExpress though reviews suggest that the audio quality on them is
rather bad. There's even <$10 (including shipping) "build your own
from these components" kits, though at that price it's 3.5mm input
rather than Bluetooth.
I'm not surprised the audio quality is bad, I expect they just drive
them with audio but to get something recognizable it needs
considerable pre-processing, it's a very quirky speaker.
OTOH I expect that the pre-processing necessary is well within the
capabilities of a $5 Raspberry Pi Zero.
>> If Seanan and Xyla don't know each other, they should.
>>
>
>The technology has been around for a while. It got popular a few
>years ago when a popular act on America's Got Talent (using electric
>guitars) used it.
ArcAttack was likely the first band doing it in public, looks like the
first known public performance was in March 2006, with a few others
using their 2007 publication to build similar devices.
ArcAttack were also the ones in the 2010 season of America's Got
Talent, looks like they did three AGT performance (including the
audition) and Youtube confirms one of them did include a guitar, the
video didn't say which one it was but based on the date in the
description it should be the quarter-final 4 performance (which got
them to semi-final 1).
One could argue it's "just" a variant of "Plasma Speaker" and those
have been around since at least the 1950's. The lineage goes back to
William Duddell's "singing arc" which he demonstrated in... 1900.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ArcAttack
https://agt.fandom.com/wiki/ArcAttack
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singing_Tesla_coil