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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

#391

Post by nomat »

loceng wrote: post #383
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'll first ask the question of do you remember if you had any ear infections as a child - and were they painful at all? It sounds like that audiologist still wasn't specialized enough - otherwise I feel like your story would have extended differently; high demand mainstream audiologists, including the mainstream audiologist profession, don't seem to have a certain lineage of knowledge that I dramatically benefit from…

This is incredibly enlightening. Thank you.

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

#392

Post by xtracto »

polartx wrote: post #305
cushychicken wrote: post #182

I used to work at Sonos, long before their current app update debacle and headphone debut. During the first aborted product effort to develop headphones, we were looking at a conceptual feature similar to this - selectively allowing people’s voices through the ANC chipset. I don’t recall the exact approach the DSP folks were using (I was closer to the hardware for ANC) but they were really only able to figure out how…

About once a year I waste about a day shopping for earbuds that would allow me to work in a noisy environment without projecting that noise into my phone calls/conference calls. Never found an adequate product. Seems like noise cancelling has been solved for the listener (isolation + ANC) but I would sure love a hardware/software combo to come along and allow me to work truly remotely by blocking out noise/isolating…

I use HyperX Cloud gaming headset for my work. Several years ago we bought them for our employees at a noisy "open office" environment (full of Mexicans, and you may know that we tend to be pretty noisy haha) and they worked pretty well (they have this microphone that extends from the headphones can be moved up or down).

Apparently the microphone has noise cancelling [1], and it seems to work pretty well. Nowadays at home, I've been in calls where my wife is using the blender at high speed, I get annoyed by it, but none of my colleagues hear it (between the headset NC and Google Meet's NC apparently it works pretty well)

[1] https://hyperx.com/products/hyperx-cloud-iii-wired-gaming-he... Crystal-Clear 10mm microphone, noise-cancelling, with LED mic-mute indicator

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

#393

Post by masterj »

simmons wrote: post #353
treflop wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s something called Auditory Processing Disorder where you are not able to able to differentiate sound and it supposedly can develop later in life. I’ve had it since I was a kid because I always passed the hearing tests but every other kid had no trouble listening to music and understanding the words and so on so I put two and two together. Anyway, I have never been able to understand anyone in any loud public s…

Thank you for the name of this disorder and link! I've also had this my whole life, and I knew it was a thing that wasn't terribly rare (based on reading comments from others in the past, here on HN and elsewhere), but I think this is the first time I've seen a name for this condition. The Wikipedia page seems to really describe my condition, except for the potential overlap with ADHD. For example, the "difficulty fo…

You may not have hearing loss, but you might actually benefit from modern hearing aids which can attenuate background noise better than consumer noise cancelling headphones. My partner has APD and hearing aids were a life-changer for them.

Consumer stuff is also getting better really quickly though

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

#394

Post by onemoresoop »

Arrath wrote: post #377
albert_e wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing I feel in my personal experience -- while I am doing something -- inability to switch attention to someone speaking to me if they do not first ask for my attention (excuse me / hello / myname / cough / knock) before diving into speaking in sentences. very often by the time i start paying attention to them speaking -- they are 4-5 words into their sentence and I have missed the context of what they are talki…

This describes well something I've learned about myself. I just figured it was excessive focus, to the point of drowning out the outside world.

Is the excessive focus the same as hyperfocus?

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

#395

Post by 1123581321 »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #316
1123581321 wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would not say it's snake oil, but it will only help if you've learned some helplessness or are bad at thinking about what someone is saying while they are speaking. A hearing aid or filter is always going to be more helpful if you only can pick one treatment.

But that's the thing, I'm in the similar position to others in the chain - last week, an audiologist said my hearing was tremendously good. But if there's noise around me, I cannot process what people are saying. I'm not sure what you mean by "only if you've learned some helplessness." I'm not a complete idiot, I can generally guess what someone is saying based on context, but if I'm having a conversation with Group…

Two real examples I knew: someone who started interrupting people mid-sentence to get clarification, and someone whose mind started going blank when other people were talking.

Behavioral training like LACE can be helpful for people who started doing things like that to cope with a hearing problem, but an audiologist should be looking at a filter (with APD you can be prescribed a filter for one ear even if you have no hearing loss, depending on your diagnosis.)

Neither case had anything to do with intelligence as demonstrated in every area of their life outside of hearing processing.

I and these others have auditory processing disorder as well.

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

#396

Post by 1123581321 »

jwagenet wrote: post #359
pavel_lishin wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's the thing, I'm in the similar position to others in the chain - last week, an audiologist said my hearing was tremendously good. But if there's noise around me, I cannot process what people are saying. I'm not sure what you mean by "only if you've learned some helplessness." I'm not a complete idiot, I can generally guess what someone is saying based on context, but if I'm having a conversation with Group…

The parent poster’s word choice was perhaps uncharitable, but my read is helplessness is not equitable to idiocy. To me, it’s more the difference between actively trying to understand the conversation vs letting it tune out as a default. I find that I have trouble focusing on one conversation if others are happening around me, but that has much to do with where my focus lies as my brain being overwhelmed.

It didn't occur to me that it was an insulting term. Sorry about that.

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

#398

Post by aquafox »

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…

It seems you are describing the Cocktail party effect: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocktail_party_effect

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

#399

Post by Arrath »

onemoresoop wrote: post #394
Arrath wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This describes well something I've learned about myself. I just figured it was excessive focus, to the point of drowning out the outside world.

Is the excessive focus the same as hyperfocus?

Probably, yeah.

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

#400

Post by burntwater »

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.

For decades now, when I enter a bar or restaurant I turn down the volume of my hearing aid. Not because everything is too loud, but because it allows me to hear spoken speech much better. It doesn't work quite as well on modern digital hearing aids as it did on older analog, and I don't fully understand the mechanics of it, but it's what I do.
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