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AI headphones let wearer listen to a single person in a crowd by looking at them

washington.edu

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Re: AI headphones let wearer listen to a single person in a crowd by looking at them

#151

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

KaiserPro wrote: post #92

One thing that the HN crowd should appreciate is just how expensive and shit hearing aids are. go and look the up the price, they are deeply expensive, even for basic "make it louder" type aids. Worse still, because they interfere with your ear, you tend to loose the ability to "steer" your hearing. This means that you can't tune out other conversations/noises or stuff. The one good side effect of facebook spending b…

> they are deeply expensive

Like, $50,000. I'm hoping that removing the need for prescription ones, will allow the price to go down significantly.

As an older person, I have noticed that my hearing has gotten "louder," over the years.

I still hear dB levels fine. The problem is that I hear all the noise. I used to be able to hold conversations in loud environments (like bar/restaurants), being able to hear the other person, despite the background noise.

Not that long ago, I was at dinner in a noisy restaurant. I was sitting directly across a narrow table from someone (about 30 inches -max).

I couldn't hear a word they said. They could hear me fine (they were younger).

If this works out, it might give the folks currently collecting $50K a pop, another way to charge eye-watering money.

Re: AI headphones let wearer listen to a single person in a crowd by looking at them

#152

Post by giantg2 »

stubish wrote: post #38
CodeCompost wrote: post #14

As somebody who is hearing impaired, a feature like this would be a Godsend for me! This feature should be integrated into hearing-aids ASAP! Shut up - no, actually - keep talking and take my money!

And we almost all will be where you are now, if we live long enough. If you can pick out audio from individuals, you could also send it through speech recognition and subtitle real world conversations for when hearing is worse or not there at all. But it really needs mobile devices capable of doing the processing locally, as I think round trips to the cloud would make it less useful or potentially useless.

"But it really needs mobile devices capable of doing the processing locally"

I would think this shouldn't be a problem as the correct hardware gets adopted in phones. As it stands now, you could probably run it on a Coral USB accelerator and battery run Pi (just an example of hardware, obviously we don't have the code).

Re: AI headphones let wearer listen to a single person in a crowd by looking at them

#153

Post by giantg2 »

spi wrote: post #137
nolok wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For something that you could actually sell in volume, you may not be thinking large enough in terms of "party". It's common to wear ear plugs at concerts, to avoid destroying your ears. Not imagine replacing those ear plugs with in-ear headphones that filter everything except your family/friends and the concert, while regulating the volume (if your SO talks to you make that one voice loud over the rest), maybe keep t…

I'm into AI but not into sound, so I might be saying something stupid here, but I think using something like this for very high volume like concerts would be possibly outright impossible, but, even if not, certainly quite dangerous and therefore not commercializable. My understanding is that to "mute" a sound, you need to inject another wave that is exactly the opposite, with the exact same volume and in perfect sync…

It probably wouldn't work for in-ear setups. However, I'd you have over the ear headphones with good passive noise canceling (35db) then you would need less of the active canceling (65db) to make it quiet and safe.

Re: AI headphones let wearer listen to a single person in a crowd by looking at them

#154

Post by wccrawford »

darkwater wrote: post #128
consp wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's an accessibility nightmare, especially (but not only) for people with hearing loss. I can't make out any conversation in a noisy environment so usually switch to try-to-filter-noise-and-fail plus some amateur form of lip reading which works ok for a casual conversation but not for a more serious one. Hearing is "ok" enough though when testing, so no clue what it is. It helps a lot when the ambient noise level…

Same here. I have a (I think) very good ear in silent environments,for example I can hear a very faint sound at night, but I always struggled following conversations in music clubs or bar with high music volumes. I always end up nodding and saying "yeah yeah" even if I have no remote idea of what the other person is saying. Edit: but OTOH I see people having actual conversations in those same environments, so I guess…

I also have a problem with "background noise" and being unable to understand what people are saying in noisy environments.

Most people definitely do not have it as badly as I do, or they'd never go to a noisy bar and try to talk. It's simply impossible for me to do anything but pay full attention to the person talking, and even then I often have to guess many of the words.

I even went and got my hearing checked (and my wife did at the same time), but the clerk assured me that we don't definitely have hearing problems and joked that we needed marriage counseling instead. :/ It's funny now, but I was a little pissed at the time.

Anyhow, my point is that some of us do indeed "hear" worse in noisy environments, even if our ears are amazing when it's quiet.

Re: AI headphones let wearer listen to a single person in a crowd by looking at them

#155

Post by criddell »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #151
KaiserPro wrote: post #92

One thing that the HN crowd should appreciate is just how expensive and shit hearing aids are. go and look the up the price, they are deeply expensive, even for basic "make it louder" type aids. Worse still, because they interfere with your ear, you tend to loose the ability to "steer" your hearing. This means that you can't tune out other conversations/noises or stuff. The one good side effect of facebook spending b…

> they are deeply expensive Like, $50,000. I'm hoping that removing the need for prescription ones, will allow the price to go down significantly. As an older person, I have noticed that my hearing has gotten "louder," over the years. I still hear dB levels fine. The problem is that I hear all the noise. I used to be able to hold conversations in loud environments (like bar/restaurants), being able to hear the other…

What kind of hearing aids cost $50k?

Re: AI headphones let wearer listen to a single person in a crowd by looking at them

#156

Post by canadianfella »

andrelaszlo wrote: post #101
KaiserPro wrote: post #92

One thing that the HN crowd should appreciate is just how expensive and shit hearing aids are. go and look the up the price, they are deeply expensive, even for basic "make it louder" type aids. Worse still, because they interfere with your ear, you tend to loose the ability to "steer" your hearing. This means that you can't tune out other conversations/noises or stuff. The one good side effect of facebook spending b…

Modern hearing aids are pretty cool. They've crammed in an amazing amount of features in a super tiny form factor, with a battery that lasts for a week even when using bluetooth. My Phonaks have the ability to automatically switch programs to some extent, and to fine tune the program using a companion app. I can function and even have conversations to some extent in noisy environments, something that would have been…

[dead]

Re: AI headphones let wearer listen to a single person in a crowd by looking at them

#157

Post by eek2121 »

KaiserPro wrote: post #92

One thing that the HN crowd should appreciate is just how expensive and shit hearing aids are. go and look the up the price, they are deeply expensive, even for basic "make it louder" type aids. Worse still, because they interfere with your ear, you tend to loose the ability to "steer" your hearing. This means that you can't tune out other conversations/noises or stuff. The one good side effect of facebook spending b…

I don’t have hearing aids, but I do suffer from hearing loss. That being said, the Apple Airpods do a wonderful job of helping with that in the adaptive or transparency modes.

Apple was working taking the platform even further at one point and I would not be surprised if we see some new announcements eventually.

Imagine if a $200 set of airpod pros outperformed top hearing aids.

Re: AI headphones let wearer listen to a single person in a crowd by looking at them

#158

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

criddell wrote: post #155
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they are deeply expensive Like, $50,000. I'm hoping that removing the need for prescription ones, will allow the price to go down significantly. As an older person, I have noticed that my hearing has gotten "louder," over the years. I still hear dB levels fine. The problem is that I hear all the noise. I used to be able to hold conversations in loud environments (like bar/restaurants), being able to hear the other…

What kind of hearing aids cost $50k?

I suspect many of them.

I was shocked, when I found out.

Of course, you aren’t just paying for the hardware. You are also paying for all the medical stuff surrounding the kit.

You can understand why vested interests fought so hard to prevent making hearing aids OTC.

Like I said, I suspect that gravy train may have derailed.

Re: AI headphones let wearer listen to a single person in a crowd by looking at them

#159

Post by [deleted] »

yard2010 wrote: post #127
andrelaszlo wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern hearing aids are pretty cool. They've crammed in an amazing amount of features in a super tiny form factor, with a battery that lasts for a week even when using bluetooth. My Phonaks have the ability to automatically switch programs to some extent, and to fine tune the program using a companion app. I can function and even have conversations to some extent in noisy environments, something that would have been…

> On the way out, I tried to mention the tough acoustics to someone at the restaurant’s front desk. I don’t think he heard me. It's funny how for some problems the path to the solution is blocked by deadlock

[deleted]

Re: AI headphones let wearer listen to a single person in a crowd by looking at them

#160

Post by eek2121 »

eek2121 wrote: post #157
KaiserPro wrote: post #92

One thing that the HN crowd should appreciate is just how expensive and shit hearing aids are. go and look the up the price, they are deeply expensive, even for basic "make it louder" type aids. Worse still, because they interfere with your ear, you tend to loose the ability to "steer" your hearing. This means that you can't tune out other conversations/noises or stuff. The one good side effect of facebook spending b…

I don’t have hearing aids, but I do suffer from hearing loss. That being said, the Apple Airpods do a wonderful job of helping with that in the adaptive or transparency modes. Apple was working taking the platform even further at one point and I would not be surprised if we see some new announcements eventually. Imagine if a $200 set of airpod pros outperformed top hearing aids.

Link to an article about it: https://www.techradar.com/how-to/how-to-use-your-apple-airpo...
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