@Brien Holcombe, kmetal Boswell, pcrecord, audiokid , ... and anyone else who may be interested:
-
"Physicists at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology have experimentally demonstrated a system capable of perfect sound absorption. Acoustic Wavesgo in, nothing comes back out. At all."

Source
-
At this point, I'm neither a proponent or a nay-sayer. I don't know enough about it yet to be either; nor do I yet have any suggestions on its practical use in a recording/mixing environment.

I'm simply posting the article here for those who might be interested in reading it, and creating an environment for relevant discussion.

I'm just the messenger here. In short, don't shoot me. Okay? Okay. ;)
-----
Here are some excerpts:

"In http://dx.doi.org/1…"]a paper[/]="http://dx.doi.org/1…"]a paper[/] published in the Applied Physics Letters this week, the Hong Kong researchers describe a rather more active absorption system (but not totally active) composed of two resonators, both of which are tuned to the same frequency, which is itself "impedance-matched" to the background medium, e.g. the open air or whatever surrounding the acoustic absorber. The result is sound-killing destructive interference."
----
"Working against the material's absorption potential is the resonator's natural coupling to the acoustic radiation of the surrounding medium. The sound Waveswant to scatter, but now at the frequency of the resonator. The second resonator is ready for this and is tuned to just the right frequency to create destructive interference. The Wavesthat would have scattered are canceled out."
----
"The end result of the new and improved version is 99.7 percent total silence, according to the current study. Which is pretty quiet."
----

Here's a link to the paper mentioned in the first quote above; which appeared in the industry publication, Applied Physics Letters, where the material's use is discussed:

http://www.nature.com/nmat/journal/v13/n9/pdf/nmat3994.pdf

"Each resonant cell of the metasurface is deep-subwavelength in all its spatial dimensions, with its thickness less than the peak absorption wavelength by two orders of magnitude. As there can be no transmission, the impedance-matched acoustic wave is hence either completely absorbed at one or multiple frequencies, or converted into other form(s) of energy, such as an electrical current. A high acoustic–electrical energy conversion efficiency of 23% is achieved."

----
Personal Observations:

Based on what I've gathered so far, I will say that I find this to be very intriguing, and quite a discovery.
Although, I'm not sure if this material/process- or something similar - has been tested previous to this discovery or not; nor do I know whether this most recent discovery is truly new and cutting edge, or if it's just a better-built mousetrap based on past research, or past similar discoveries and/or inventions.

What I've not seen mentioned (yet) are certain parameters of the tests, one being the SPL/Velocity that this material was tested at.

Without down-playing the discovery, or the potential importance and practical application of the system, I do feel that the title of the article is misleading, as I found a section within that mentions that the material reaches limitations in its effective absorption coefficient/rating starting at around 250Hz and on down...
So, if this is true, then it's not really a "complete" absorption system, and low-frequency RT60 attenuation methods would still need to be implemented, if it were to be considered for use in a mixing environment.
(There's also the very real concern/question as to whether one would want to mix in what would amount to an anechoic environment).

-----
Anyhoooo... I thought I'd share this.

So... Thoughts? Comments?

Anyone?

:)

-d.