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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

#321

Post by cqqxo4zV46cp »

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.

Ha. Classic techie parachuting in and incorrectly intuiting how something works. Show me earplugs that REDUCE equally across all frequencies and I’ll invest every dollar I have to my name.

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

#322

Post by MisterBastahrd »

While not exactly the same, I came across an app called Tunity the other day. It allows you to use your phone camera to catch the live audio feed of the television that you are attempting to watch, whether the audio is muted or if it's in a loud, crowded location, like a sports bar or airport. I haven't used it, but it's an interesting concept.

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

#323

Post by oldkinglog »

dingnuts wrote: post #304
countvonbalzac wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't there some cheap ways to muffle sound? Wood floors, rugs, curtains, artwork, acoustic panels, etc.

yes, really any soft surfaces will damp[0] (not "dampen") sound, but the techniques and materials can get very advanced (and expensive, and effective) 0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damping

Why can't "dampen" be applied to oscillators? It means "To lessen; to dull; to make less intense" in this case.

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

#324

Post by BeFlatXIII »

throwup238 wrote: post #226
HPsquared wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's depressing to think of the different ways people are treated like livestock on a factory farm.

At least livestock gets to grow up in pasture before they’re sent to the feedlots.

Not all livestock is so lucky to have been born a cow.

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

#325

Post by MisterBastahrd »

superultra wrote: post #185
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…

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'm one of those annoying ADHD people who will hear everything you're saying, ask "What?," and then a second later I've finished processing the audio in my head and am ready to continue the conversation. Similarly, I can't readily differentiate voices from melody in songs. Far too many songs don't have strong enough vocal tracks and the songs might as well just be mud to me. I suppose it's why I gravitated towards rap and R&B growing up.

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

#326

Post by KaiserPro »

thsksbd wrote: post #231
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…

Instead of fancy shmancy AI, could a pupil tracker on eyeglasses be used to estimate where a person wants to hear and use phasing to amplify the signal from there? You have two microphones already, spaced about 30 cm apart...

Yup thats basically what most AR glasses are capable of (or in the case of the linked aria glasses, research device that does have all the sensors.)

but you don't need eye tracking all the time, as most you can latch on to the location of the speaker without looking at them continuously.

The possibilities are rather good, but it needs someone willing to fund the research

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

#327

Post by foobiekr »

foreigner wrote: post #77

I'll bet they achieve commercial success with the reverse application. Imagine being able to mute that one obnoxiously loud person with an annoying voice at a party!

There's also a pretty useful criminal application of listening in on people without them knowing.

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

#328

Post by jefurii »

kk6mrp wrote: post #285
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you have a good earplug recommendation?

I like Etymotic (https://www.etymotic.com). The design lowers the decibels without affecting the sound too much. I used to play in a band with a drummer who always wore their high-end plugs which you have to have molded to your ear canals, but they also make cheaper standardized ones that do a good job.

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

#329

Post by andy »

I opened an issue with this. Maybe someone here knows.

I see a Python script I can run on my computer, I haven't tried it yet, but I think I could connect a microphone and process real-time audio and output it in real time, but I don’t know how to detect the user looking at someone. Could you tell me how that works?

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