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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

#411

Post by 0_____0 »

cqqxo4zV46cp wrote: post #321
0_____0 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

https://www.etymotic.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/erl-0108...

Here's a publication featuring ear protection products for musicians that attempts to do this. It's not perfect but it's pretty good (I own a set of custom earmolds with the Etymotic filters).

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

#412

Post by seoulmetro »

ffsm8 wrote: post #43
seoulmetro wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like overuse of ANC is going to come with some sort of physical or physiological drawback soon or too late.

Highly doubtful, it's just a microphones and the speakers that emit inverted sound waves. This is one of the safest technologies I can imagine. It's more likely that the radio waves from wireless communication (phones, Bluetooth headphones etc) will have negative impact, but even that's unlikely at this point, considering how widespread their use is and no statistically significant link exists.

Sure but it's combined noise on top of existing sound waves that gets me. They don't cancel out midair, they cancel out in your brain right?

And yeah, I also don't trust all these radio waves we have going everywhere and wonder if big events with hundreds of thousands of phones are doing at least some damage.

Things seem unlikely til we realise. Like plague spreading through bad smells. We were close but dismissive.

Anyway I hope I'm not right, but it still plays in my mind.

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

#413

Post by 0_____0 »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #216
0_____0 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wonder if anyone has made a set of earplugs that specifically target attenuation so that primary speech frequencies are less affected. I know foamies roll off HF aggressively (looks like 2k is the knee point[1])

My issue with foam earplugs is that they're too good at attenuating. I end up wearing them partially inserted, which is ok as long as you're staying still. If you are at a concert, or you're eating, or you have long hair, you'll disturb them.

[1]: https://www.offshorenorge.no/globalassets/dokumenter/drift/s...

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

#414

Post by 0_____0 »

vidarh wrote: post #261
0_____0 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It didn't help much with the signal, but it also didn't make it worse, and it made the overall experience far more pleasant.

Pretty much my point.

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

#415

Post by wkat4242 »

dekhn wrote: post #355
roughly wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’re near Berkeley, CA, one of the owners of the restaurant Comal also owns a sound company that builds that kind of system, and they use Comal as a showplace. The effect is astounding - it’s an industrial-style design, and it’s got auditory “ambiance”, but you can have a full conversation at normal speaking volumes with everyone at the table. It’s the kind of thing where once you experience it, you’ll judge the…

Oh neat: https://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-08/restaurant... Meyer Sound which did the sound install for the space is a long-time well-known innovator in sound tech- for example, establishing vertical line arrays. Years ago the son of the founder was doing advanced space modelling for the best sound (basically, entering the room geometry and simulating with helmholtz equations). I will go there just for t…

I'd hate those stools though. Great to have a non overwhelming auditory experience but if my back is killing me that's not much of an improvement.

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

#418

Post by nluken »

nolok wrote: post #115
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!

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…

It seems like this kind of thing could be technically feasible but the idea that people would use it to block the world out over a few inconveniences seems kind of depressing to me. Sometimes you end up making a friend simply because you found the conversation next you interesting.

Like others in this thread are saying, though, it would be an incredible boon for people who use hearing aids.

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

#420

Post by rayxi271828 »

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 always frustrates me that I don't hear something, I ask the person to repeat only to not hear it again, usually because they repeat it at the same low level

I thought I was the only one with this problem! Someone would make a joke and I would have to pretend to laugh because I didn't even catch what he/she was saying and asking them to repeat it the 3rd time would be awkward.

Even worse, it isn't always a joke, so even calibrating the laughter level is hard. Ugh.

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