Creating ad hoc microphone arrays from personal devices (2019) • Hacker News Board

Re: Creating ad hoc microphone arrays from personal devices (2019)

#11

Post by crazygringo » Sun, Apr 26, 2020, 3:00 PM UTC

airstrike wrote: post #10

crazygringo wrote: post #6

This is a really interesting technical concept. Capturing high-quality audio in a meeting room for videoconferencing is a notoriously complicated problem. Microphones are crazy sensitive and pick up things like footsteps and conversations outside the door, shuffling feet and tapping on keyboards, and construction and HVAC noise like you wouldn't believe. So filtering those things out, and then capturing the best qual…

> This could actually be a huge step forward in not needing videoconferencing equipment in meeting rooms. So far, one of the biggest reasons has actually been dealing with echo and feedback -- when people are in the same call with multiple devices in the same room, it tends to end badly. But if the audio processing is designed for that... the results could actually be quite amazing. > And it's well-known that the "bo…

That doesn't work for multiple people in the same room all wearing AirPods. Everyone's mic picks up everyone's voice, not just the "real" speaker.

And a lot of meetings have most (e.g. 10) people in a single room, with another handful (e.g. 5) of remote participants.

Re: Creating ad hoc microphone arrays from personal devices (2019)

#12

Post by adrianmonk » Sun, Apr 26, 2020, 3:01 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #8

itchyjunk wrote: post #7

There are obvious(?) privacy issues and what not here. But ignoring all that for a second, it does sound pretty cool to be able to leverage all the little computers we walk around with. Think of all those shitty little video clips people take at a concert. Could all those be combined to make some high quality panoramic video? Probably a lot of other cool applications that I can't even comprehend for now. What a time…

> What a time to be alive. This technology was already available in the 60s with Kalman filters.

The key word here is "available". Computers were available in the 1960s as well, but there wasn't one in everybody's pocket.

The innovation here seems to be primarily about making this available in circumstances where it wouldn't otherwise be.

Re: Creating ad hoc microphone arrays from personal devices (2019)

#13

Post by ComodoHacker » Sun, Apr 26, 2020, 3:04 PM UTC

itchyjunk wrote: post #7

There are obvious(?) privacy issues and what not here. But ignoring all that for a second, it does sound pretty cool to be able to leverage all the little computers we walk around with. Think of all those shitty little video clips people take at a concert. Could all those be combined to make some high quality panoramic video? Probably a lot of other cool applications that I can't even comprehend for now. What a time…

Looks like they're going to leverage only our microphones, not the computers. Just another plausible way to suck even more data into the cloud.

Re: Creating ad hoc microphone arrays from personal devices (2019)

#14

Post by kick » Sun, Apr 26, 2020, 3:05 PM UTC

itchyjunk wrote: post #7

There are obvious(?) privacy issues and what not here. But ignoring all that for a second, it does sound pretty cool to be able to leverage all the little computers we walk around with. Think of all those shitty little video clips people take at a concert. Could all those be combined to make some high quality panoramic video? Probably a lot of other cool applications that I can't even comprehend for now. What a time…

Panoramic no (panoramas work on a single axis), but interesting despite that.

One of the applications for a thing like that would be creating 3D environments of concerts and other historical events that were fairly accurate from any angle, though, which could have some pretty interesting effects (could you imagine how interesting it would be if you could watch old concerts of dead artists, or a politician's speech from a hundred years ago, with 6 degrees of freedom, "accurate to the millimeter!" or something?) and outcomes and so on. Much more interesting historical record-keeping.

Re: Creating ad hoc microphone arrays from personal devices (2019)

#15

Post by crazygringo » Sun, Apr 26, 2020, 3:12 PM UTC

itchyjunk wrote: post #7

There are obvious(?) privacy issues and what not here. But ignoring all that for a second, it does sound pretty cool to be able to leverage all the little computers we walk around with. Think of all those shitty little video clips people take at a concert. Could all those be combined to make some high quality panoramic video? Probably a lot of other cool applications that I can't even comprehend for now. What a time…

> Think of all those shitty little video clips people take at a concert. Could all those be combined to make some high quality panoramic video?

People definitely have created very cool, close to seeming professionally-produced, full-length concert films out of tens of separate YouTube uploads. It takes a lot of editing skill though.

An actual 3D panorama is vastly harder, but remember Microsoft PhotoSynth? That rendered a 3D point cloud out of hundreds/thousands of tourist photos, and positioned the photos from where they were taken.

Re: Creating ad hoc microphone arrays from personal devices (2019)

#16

Post by eeZah7Ux » Sun, Apr 26, 2020, 3:16 PM UTC

itchyjunk wrote: post #7

There are obvious(?) privacy issues and what not here. But ignoring all that for a second, it does sound pretty cool to be able to leverage all the little computers we walk around with. Think of all those shitty little video clips people take at a concert. Could all those be combined to make some high quality panoramic video? Probably a lot of other cool applications that I can't even comprehend for now. What a time…

Phones and servers in the offices have more than enough processing power to do this, without the cloud surveillance service.

Also, it's been done by sound engineers for decades.

Re: Creating ad hoc microphone arrays from personal devices (2019)

#17

Post by eeZah7Ux » Sun, Apr 26, 2020, 3:18 PM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #6

This is a really interesting technical concept. Capturing high-quality audio in a meeting room for videoconferencing is a notoriously complicated problem. Microphones are crazy sensitive and pick up things like footsteps and conversations outside the door, shuffling feet and tapping on keyboards, and construction and HVAC noise like you wouldn't believe. So filtering those things out, and then capturing the best qual…

> it's an insanely hard problem

Not much: each participant has a pair of (amplitude, phase) values for each microphone. Filtering human voices and correlating sources to find the phase is not new.

Re: Creating ad hoc microphone arrays from personal devices (2019)

#18

Post by andai » Sun, Apr 26, 2020, 3:20 PM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #11

airstrike wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This could actually be a huge step forward in not needing videoconferencing equipment in meeting rooms. So far, one of the biggest reasons has actually been dealing with echo and feedback -- when people are in the same call with multiple devices in the same room, it tends to end badly. But if the audio processing is designed for that... the results could actually be quite amazing. > And it's well-known that the "bo…

That doesn't work for multiple people in the same room all wearing AirPods. Everyone's mic picks up everyone's voice, not just the "real" speaker. And a lot of meetings have most (e.g. 10) people in a single room, with another handful (e.g. 5) of remote participants.

How about a regular headset?

Re: Creating ad hoc microphone arrays from personal devices (2019)

#19

Post by LegitShady » Sun, Apr 26, 2020, 3:23 PM UTC

airstrike wrote: post #10

crazygringo wrote: post #6

This is a really interesting technical concept. Capturing high-quality audio in a meeting room for videoconferencing is a notoriously complicated problem. Microphones are crazy sensitive and pick up things like footsteps and conversations outside the door, shuffling feet and tapping on keyboards, and construction and HVAC noise like you wouldn't believe. So filtering those things out, and then capturing the best qual…

> This could actually be a huge step forward in not needing videoconferencing equipment in meeting rooms. So far, one of the biggest reasons has actually been dealing with echo and feedback -- when people are in the same call with multiple devices in the same room, it tends to end badly. But if the audio processing is designed for that... the results could actually be quite amazing. > And it's well-known that the "bo…

Perhaps this is why simpler isn't always better. You aren't really solving the problem and the cost of your solution outweighs its "simplicity".

15 people around the table in a conference room and each person wearing airpods (thus being connected to their own device) is an expensive solution with a lot of points of failure.

Re: Creating ad hoc microphone arrays from personal devices (2019)

#20

Post by Zenst » Sun, Apr 26, 2020, 3:28 PM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #6

This is a really interesting technical concept. Capturing high-quality audio in a meeting room for videoconferencing is a notoriously complicated problem. Microphones are crazy sensitive and pick up things like footsteps and conversations outside the door, shuffling feet and tapping on keyboards, and construction and HVAC noise like you wouldn't believe. So filtering those things out, and then capturing the best qual…

> Capturing high-quality audio in a meeting room for videoconferencing is a notoriously complicated problem

Not from my experience of 20 years ago setting up VC systems, biggest issue was video and making sure lighting was good, and plane wall behind (sky blue was good colour for that).

Audio wise, was many desk standing mic's (can't recall main brand) but was a few.

Did have one issue once with setting up a connection to a remote french company, was no audio from there end - turned out that the technician at the other end was sat on the end of the table in front of the camera and also was sat upon the mic that was on the table. Soon solved but still, most funny.

Back then we had VC systems that could roll into a room on a cart and worked well - picturTel IIRC being one solution back then and PolyCon being another that soon overtook them as well as doing wonderful conferencing microphones.

But as bandwidth got cheaper and more accessible, many meeting rooms that would be too noisy visually for VC became accessible and the need for dedicated rooms drifted away for more client usage.

Though audio from my experience back then was the easy part.