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It's time to level up headphone tech

chrismaury.com

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Re: It's time to level up headphone tech

#21

Post by dfc »

morsch wrote: post #20
dfc wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"What good is a directional microphone and why would a headphone distinguish between voices and background noise?" Lacking any context there is no way to answer your question. Tools do not have any intrinsic value, a tool's value is derived from its application to a problem. It seems as if you are approaching headsets purely as a means of music reproduction. There are many applications of headsets where audio fidelit…

The article (which I quoted and which serves as the context for my post) refers the the state of headphone tech, not headset tech. He only ever talks about headphones, and the brief introductory reference to another blog entry about AR seemed fairly beside the point and the theme isn't picked up again. I guess he might have been talking about headsets, although once again I'm not sure the tech is in need of an innova…

"even outside the realm of speciality gear for more efficiently killing people."

FYI, this discussion is made possible because of DARPAnet and other innovation boosts drawn from the realm of "more efficently killing people". So handwaving/ignoring tech.mil seems a little short sighted at the very least. But let's return to:

"What good is a directional microphone and why (and lacking a microphone, how?) would a headphone distinguish between voices and background noise?"

How about headphones for factory workers? Construction workers? Soccer moms/dads who want to listen to a book on tape while little johnny and 25 other 5 year olds clamber up and down and all over metal playground equipment? Scientists on safari in africa or bird watching in the amazon? News camera man operating in a nousy environment that needs to hear what the reporter is saying while monitoring the police-band/other coverage/updates from main news desk?

That's five examples that I can think of off the top of my head. But its not clear what field you are restricting the discussion to. That is why I asked what you meant by "what good is"? Without a problem/application it is impossible to identify the value of a technology.

Re: It's time to level up headphone tech

#22

Post by shabble »

This is something I've put a lot of thought into over the last couple of years, but I've never gotten around to figuring out an actual model or design.

My basic premises are:

* hearing aids are commonly moulded to fit the individual, and thus have exceptionally good noise rejection.

* They are designed to be worn for long periods of time without discomfort.

* The ability to selectively attenuate/amplify certain signals would be very useful.

* Being able to pre-process incoming audio would be extremely useful for suppressing transients (say, gunfire, nearby aircraft, roadworks) to protect the user.

* A phased microphone array could be used to provide directional selectivity, and to determine and recreate the position of the original source.

* You can transparently mix other signals into your normal hearing, such as music, phone calls, games, etc.

In terms of tech, there's really 3 things to figure out:

1. Can you achieve good isolation (external noise attenuation) whilst providing high quality audio playback? Ideally the quality would be indistinguishable from not wearing them, but physics might disagree.

2. Can you build a relatively compact microphone array with positional discrimination capabilities at or beyond the human ear?

3. Can you build a DSP with the necessary discriminator/transient suppression/mixing capabilities within a realistic power/space/heat budget?

4. Can you build the whole thing into a per-ear unit or headphone unit, with wireless links to some sort of controller, plus sources for input (e.g. a phone or music player)

5. Can you make money out of it? (Given how useful it could be to especially police/military, I'm going to go with 'yes')

Re: It's time to level up headphone tech

#23

Post by ChuckMcM »

I have wondered about this as well. Certainly the combination of an in-ear device and some external sensors would be killer at parties. Look at someone and tap your ear, they get a ping that you'd like to chat with them and you enable a conversation.

For the UX folks it would be interesting to design a chat UI where the inputs might be things like head tilt, nods, shakes, taps, and voice.

The smarts don't have to be in the hearing aid either. My phone and my tablet can be the 'processing' power with the WiFi/4G connection.

Re: It's time to level up headphone tech

#24

Post by Yaggo »

zacharypinter wrote: post #6

Yes! Thanks for the post. I really enjoy scifi books that focus on how technology can integrate and augment the human body. Though these books often talk of brain implants and genetic modification, the path to that destination (if we do achieve it) will almost certainly start with non-invasive versions. I think that smartphones with ubiquitous internet and gps were the first big step in this direction. Some of the ne…

> Some of the next steps will be discrete/invisible headphones that we can always be wearing

I just ordered Sony Ericsson WM600 bluetooth receiver (35 EUR with shipping) for my miniature Klipsch X10 in-ear headphones (they are amazing, btw). Will make an ideal discrete set, I think.

Re: It's time to level up headphone tech

#25

Post by morsch »

dfc wrote: post #21
morsch wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article (which I quoted and which serves as the context for my post) refers the the state of headphone tech, not headset tech. He only ever talks about headphones, and the brief introductory reference to another blog entry about AR seemed fairly beside the point and the theme isn't picked up again. I guess he might have been talking about headsets, although once again I'm not sure the tech is in need of an innova…

"even outside the realm of speciality gear for more efficiently killing people." FYI, this discussion is made possible because of DARPAnet and other innovation boosts drawn from the realm of "more efficently killing people" . So handwaving/ignoring tech.mil seems a little short sighted at the very least. But let's return to: "What good is a directional microphone and why (and lacking a microphone, how?) would a headp…

What would the directional microphone do in those circumstances?

Re: It's time to level up headphone tech

#26

Post by ebiester »

JonnieCache wrote: post #17

Sound leakage is an inevitable consequence of good sound quality. Put simply, those excess soundwaves ultimately have to go somewhere, and it's a choice between jettisoning them into the environment and annoying people, trying to absorb them in the body of the headphone and losing quality, or trying to produce less of them in the first place, also losing quality. Very cheap headphones leak sound because they are very…

Both (mostly) true and missing the point.

The point of the article was to say that with the current capabilities of smartphones, and televisions, etc, if we could wire it all up to a piece of equipment similar to a hearing aid, it would improve our lives. Sound quality really is a secondary characteristic to this for the purpose of the article.

Re: It's time to level up headphone tech

#27

Post by [deleted] »

ebiester wrote: post #26
JonnieCache wrote: post #17

Sound leakage is an inevitable consequence of good sound quality. Put simply, those excess soundwaves ultimately have to go somewhere, and it's a choice between jettisoning them into the environment and annoying people, trying to absorb them in the body of the headphone and losing quality, or trying to produce less of them in the first place, also losing quality. Very cheap headphones leak sound because they are very…

Both (mostly) true and missing the point. The point of the article was to say that with the current capabilities of smartphones, and televisions, etc, if we could wire it all up to a piece of equipment similar to a hearing aid, it would improve our lives. Sound quality really is a secondary characteristic to this for the purpose of the article.

[deleted]

Re: It's time to level up headphone tech

#29

Post by gammarator »

djloche wrote: post #2

While I agree with the general sentiment expressed (people buy poor quality headphones that leak music and proceed to seemingly obliviously blast their music for all to hear), please consider investigating higher quality headphones & their tech. From a well known audiophile guide to headphones: "In general it's best to avoid products made by Skullcandy, Bose, Beats, or Monster unless otherwise specified...These compa…

Here's the guide in question: http://www.head-fi.org/a/headphone-buying-guide

Re: It's time to level up headphone tech

#30

Post by JonnieCache »

ebiester wrote: post #26
JonnieCache wrote: post #17

Sound leakage is an inevitable consequence of good sound quality. Put simply, those excess soundwaves ultimately have to go somewhere, and it's a choice between jettisoning them into the environment and annoying people, trying to absorb them in the body of the headphone and losing quality, or trying to produce less of them in the first place, also losing quality. Very cheap headphones leak sound because they are very…

Both (mostly) true and missing the point. The point of the article was to say that with the current capabilities of smartphones, and televisions, etc, if we could wire it all up to a piece of equipment similar to a hearing aid, it would improve our lives. Sound quality really is a secondary characteristic to this for the purpose of the article.

Fair point. I was just trying to address some mentions of sound leakage here and in the article, and to point out that with audio a lot of the time we are up against physical limits.
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