Bonephones

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What Does Bonephones Mean?

Bonephones are a set of earphones and other tools that conduct sound using bones in the skull. These new types of communications equipment work through the principle of physical conduction, rather than traditional headphones that simply stream audio directly into the ear.

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Techopedia Explains Bonephones

Bonephones may seem relatively new, but some models date back to the 2000s. There’s a rich record of various innovators, including major classical musicians, creating their own primitive bone noise conductors in past centuries.

Bonephones bypass the eardrum and deliver sound directly to the inner ear. Some experts consider this to be a safer way to deliver sound, though some users complain that the result doesn’t quite sound the same. In terms of their design, bonephones are in some ways a first step toward technologies such as cochlear implants that provide alternatives to simply inputting audio through the outer ear.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology expert

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ​​a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.