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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

#211

Post by tech2 »

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…

You could probably achieve the same outcome by combining two approaches though. Use traditional timing and phase management that existing noise cancelling headphones do. Then, using the data from that same set of microphones use AI to extract the conversation of interest (maybe using timing differences from left/right to determine who's "in front" of you) and inject that as the thing to overlay on top of the inversion. This way there's no risk of AI error on the noise cancellation and you can rely on existing solutions.

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

#212

Post by KaiserPro »

moffkalast wrote: post #126
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…

> you tend to loose the ability to "steer" your hearing Do people genuinely have that ability, to listen to a specific person and ignore the rest? Asking because no matter how hard I try I can never understand a fucking thing if there's many people talking loudly in the background, it all mixes together into an incoherent whole.

> Do people genuinely have that ability

Indeed! however like visual depth perception, not everyone has it. The human ear has a load of bits that allow removing noise from the signal. (I don't have a block diagram, sorry!)

In theory one should be able to locate a noise in 3D. You can test this by getting someone to hide your phone and then ring it. if you have 3d sound perception you should be able to work out if the phone is behind/front/up/down.That forms part of the "steering" ability.

Then there is filtering the noises that you don't want. Music is can be a good test for this, how many instruments played on this track, what instruments were they, what were the lyrics, etc. Being able to do this requires that you be able to filter out noises that you don't like.

Again like all human senses, there are levels of ability, and in some cases can be improved with "exercise"

But, hearing what people are saying against a loud background is really really hard, so don't worry too much. Plus voices have specific human social encoding, so they can be affected disproportionally

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

#213

Post by pavel_lishin »

ceejayoz wrote: post #189
superultra wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could not hear anyone in any crowded situation. At middle age I thought my hearing was leaving. Yet every audiologist I went to said my hearing was fine. So I found the best audiologist in my fairly large metro area, and scheduled a year in advance (the wait list was that long). After a whole day of tests the audiologist comes in and says I have good news and bad news and good bad news. The good news is that my hea…

I've got a similar thing; I can't pull most song lyrics out of the song, and any significant amount of background noise means lip reading for me. Hearing's all fine, it's the processing that doesn't work quite right. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auditory_processing_disorder

Ditto here. An audiologist recommended something called LACE therapy, but it wasn't cheap so at the time I didn't go for it - I need to look into it, and see if it's a legitimate treatment for this, or snake-oil.

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

#214

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

newaccount74 wrote: post #196
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They don't cost 50k. They cost at least an order of magnitude less. My moms hearing aids cost 3000€. They support bluetooth so she can use them with her iPhone. The price includes hearing tests, getting molds of the hearing canal, all the setup and configuration performed by skilled technicians. Sure they are expensive, but there really isn't much of an opportunity for disruption. Customized hardware is expensive, th…

I live in the US.

I noticed that someone else posted a comment, saying that Americans exaggerate medical costs.

We don't.

Our doctors drive Bentleys.

I'm really glad that they have broken the monopoly. Maybe some politicians retrieved their souls.

It's absolutely insane how expensive healthcare is in the US.

But THANK GOD we don't have socialism! /s

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

#215

Post by [deleted] »

serial_dev wrote: post #162

If the size could shrink to the size of a small earplug, I'd love to use this as a person who is not hearing-impaired (at least they couldn't diagnose me with it, so now I'm not sure if their diagnostics sucks, or I'm just a normal person and others pretend better that they hear everything well) . In groups and with friends, it's inevitable that you end up in a busy restaurant or a bar, and it always frustrates me th…

[deleted]

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

#216

Post by LeifCarrotson »

0_____0 wrote: post #206
vidarh wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I resorted to wearing earplugs for several years when I was going out more. I felt it did very little to reduce my ability to hear conversations, and it made the whole experience overall so much more pleasant.

If the SNR is already low enough that you're having issues discerning speech, lowering the volume won't help.

Lowering the volume can help with the SNR, because neither the signal, the noise, nor the lowering effect caused by earplugs are consistent with respect to frequency. Highly objectionable, harsh 4-8 kHz noise that might echo around a concrete and steel venue is blocked well by good earplugs, while low-frequency 100-400 Hz speech is ineffectively blocked.

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

#217

Post by btbuildem »

When I was a youngling, I dreamed of having headphones with the opposite power -- muting specific people. For me, it's not the hubbub of a crowd that's distracting, it's usually one or two offending specimens - like in the video example, the inconsiderate vermin using a speakerphone in public.

I wonder if the problem maps easily from "select this source" to "select everything but that source"

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

#218

Post by cs02rm0 »

j1elo wrote: post #193
totetsu wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are these passive directional earplugs https://www.flareaudio.com/pages/earhd

The prospect of an earplug that eases focusing audio got me interested... but no thanks, I won't go out to socialize with basically two mini trumpets coming out of my ears. It looks funny, reminiscing of classic b&w pictures with deaf people carrying ear trumpets everywhere with them during 18th century.

Yeah, I like the concept, not a fan of the implementation.

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

#219

Post by pavel_lishin »

wruza wrote: post #195
serial_dev wrote: post #162

If the size could shrink to the size of a small earplug, I'd love to use this as a person who is not hearing-impaired (at least they couldn't diagnose me with it, so now I'm not sure if their diagnostics sucks, or I'm just a normal person and others pretend better that they hear everything well) . In groups and with friends, it's inevitable that you end up in a busy restaurant or a bar, and it always frustrates me th…

This isn't your issue though. A group chooses to talk in an environment where they can barely hear each other. Rather than using a device for it, I'd recommend to perceive the problem as it is and solve it in a conventional way. E.g. by saying "I couldn't hear shit, and you too probably. That's stupid, let's go instead" unless it's hard to do. Generally these places are designed for you to suffer unless you're scream…

It's certainly their issue if they want to continue spending time with the group doing what most of the group prefers.

> I don't get why people go there and leave money, cause I wouldn't go there even for that money.

That's a problem with lack of empathy and understanding on your part, not with the group dynanimcs of that person's friends.

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