Live data from Hacker News

Hush: The World's First Smart Earplugs

hush.technology

21–30 of 98 posts

Re: Hush: The World's First Smart Earplugs

#21

The large 70db next to "hush the world" makes it sound like the earplugs offer 70db of noise reduction. Which I know is BS, because the best earplugs made offer 33db of noise reduction. I can only assume that the 70db number is the sum of the noise attenuation and the speakers' volume, but specific claims about the earplugs performance would be nice.

Yeah, it is the sum of the passive attenuation of the earplug and the noise masking. We don't have the test equipment yet to make a dB calculation of NRR for the foam component, but from subjective tests when comparing with other earplugs, the foam seems to block out about ~30dB!

Re: Hush: The World's First Smart Earplugs

#23

For anyone who sleeps on their side, earplugs with plastic extending outside the ear canal is a very uncomfortable experience. How is this an improvement over soft foam inserts? Also, how is this different from using in-ear headphones with Comply tips? http://www.complyfoam.com/

We've done a lot of tests with the ergonomics of it - even delaying our launch for a month so that we could iterate more because the side-sleeper comfort wasn't up to par. it's smaller and rounder than what you see in the video as we filmed the first half of the video before our final design. ~70% of the people we had sleep with it for an entire night noted that it was comfortable. that number will get even better as we implement the inner silicone layer.

the main difference between using in-ear headphones with comply tips is wires. I've had to used wired for a long time and it was terrible. They'd tangle and get pulled out of my ear. They'd pull my phone out of the charger. I've even had my phone run out of battery in the middle of the night because it got disconnected. When you roll around, wires in bed are not a pleasant experience. :(

Also, the software built in is very different. Normal earphones don't have our user-friendly software that has features designed for sleep. I.e. when an alert sounds on your phone with normal earphones, it sounds in both your headphones and your phone's speaker - waking up others around you. There might be some hacked homebrew way of getting some of Hush's software features on normal earphones but our software makes it easy. :)

Re: Hush: The World's First Smart Earplugs

#25

Doesn't Kickstarter have a policy against using renders? https://www.kickstarter.com/rules "we prohibit photorealistic renderings."

When I spoke with someone from Kickstarter, they said that it's a safeguard against 'vaporware.' As long as you show evidence of your actual prototype (boards, CAD models, etc) and that real engineering is complete, it's fine!

Re: Hush: The World's First Smart Earplugs

#26

Developer here! Hoping to get some feedback if possible!

Your site is down at the moment, so let me ask - as a musician, what do these get me over Etymotic's earplugs? I have a $160 pair of custom-molded plugs with replaceable filters that go from -5 to -20dB attenuation.

They're meant more for sleep! Musician earplugs offer a completely different value proposition in keeping the frequency response the same while reducing dB. Our earplugs' purpose is to get maximum dB isolation so that your sleep isn't disturbed!

Re: Hush: The World's First Smart Earplugs

#27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our plans are to tie into the greater smart home! Think Nest, smart baby monitors, smart security systems, etc. We've already been talking with a number of OEM's like Samsung who want us to use their ecosystem :) But for this V1, we can't effectively block out a fire alarm.. those are really loud.. We can block out maybe 70dB max with our device whereas fire alarms are generally much much louder!

Was active noise cancellation technically infeasible for this product?

Battery limitations :( And cost. It's also not the best at blocking out the sudden transient sounds that are responsible for jarring people out of sleep. Passive noise reduction + noise masking are much more effective for that!

Re: Hush: The World's First Smart Earplugs

#28

Very cool product. You can get a similar effect to these isolation+masking plugs by wearing normal earplugs and then playing loud masking sounds externally (either over speakers in the same room, or through over-the-ear headphones). On planes, for instance, I wear headphones over my earplugs and crank up the volume to watch movies. It's the poor-man's noise-canceling headphones! If you can, also turn up the treble to…

Yeah you can! A lot of the people I interviewed actually did that - they'd wear earplugs and have a sound generator going... Haha. Kind of counterintuitive since they'd be blocking out the noise masking as well, ha!

That is a good workaround though to get a similar effect! Funny how you tried to digitally equalize the earplugs low-pass filter, haha

Re: Hush: The World's First Smart Earplugs

#29

These are definitely not the world's first smart earplugs - Etymotic has been offering this kind of technology for quite a long time now. http://www.etymotic.com/gsp15.html

I think it's a reasonable claim. Those Etymotics are just a mic-and-speaker system that does 'compression' (in the audio engineering sense of that word)--they're actually more analogous to an in-ear hearing aid.

[Edited to be less snarky, before I noticed the reply]

Re: Hush: The World's First Smart Earplugs

#30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your site is down at the moment, so let me ask - as a musician, what do these get me over Etymotic's earplugs? I have a $160 pair of custom-molded plugs with replaceable filters that go from -5 to -20dB attenuation.

They're meant more for sleep! Musician earplugs offer a completely different value proposition in keeping the frequency response the same while reducing dB. Our earplugs' purpose is to get maximum dB isolation so that your sleep isn't disturbed!

[deleted]
Post reply on HN