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 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 (considering the circumstances). Missing jokes and throwaway comments is even worse ("hey what are you all laughing about, I didn't hear it, could you repeat it for me like three times until I hear it").
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 hearing was beyond great, it was at the level of a 5 year old. The bad news: I could hear so well I was unable to differentiate sound; my hearing hadn’t gotten worse, my brain’s ability to separate sound had. The good bad news is that my hearing would inevitably deteriorate, as all ours does, and for several years I’d be able hear in public places!
I think part of what has made this worse is that restaurant and public space designers have stopped thinking about sound. Most bars opened in the last 15 years have cement floors, very little sound insulation, and they’re based on the idea that you’re not having a good time unless your ears are ringing.
I’ve stopped patronizing these places if only because I literally cannot maintain conversations.
This isn't your issue though. A group chooses to talk in an environment where they can barely hear each other. Rather than using a device for it, I'd recommend to perceive the problem as it is and solve it in a conventional way. E.g. by saying "I couldn't hear shit, and you too probably. That's stupid, let's go <goodplacename> instead" unless it's hard to do. Generally these places are designed for you to suffer unless you're screaming all the time and are indifferent to surroundings. I don't get why people go there and leave money, cause I wouldn't go there even for that money. You don't want an AI device that replaces respect for each others limits.
I've taken to wearing bone-conductors waaaaay to much, and I'm impressed with their flexibility for stuff like this. They keep my ears open, but when I need to hear the headset more clearly (like if I'm in a crowded area and taking a call) I can plug my ear with my finger and that both improves the audio quality of the bone conductor (it creates a speaker cabinet in your ear for a much fuller sound) and blocks out the outside noise. If you need full headphone-quality you put in ear-plugs. And they're pretty small and discrete.
They're not perfect, but the fact that I can move smoothly from "I need my ears open but still want to hear my headset" to "I need to block out sound and hear my headset perfectly clearly" with just a finger or a pair of earplugs is great.
Stick a shotgun mic (that's the term for a mic with tight directional cone, right? Not an audio guy) on the side and this would be really cool.
I have issues with auditory processing disorder which means my hearing is actually really good, but someone talking to me seems to get a much lower decode priority than some random noise around me - if I can see the lips, even though I can't lipread, it helps me decode the speech with a much greater accuracy.
Every time I looked into this, it seemed to push the link with autism and/or adhd - back in 2008 I wasn't diagnosed so I poo-pooed the idea somewhat. Now I'm diagnosed as AuDHD.
> In groups and with friends, it's inevitable that you end up in a busy restaurant or a bar, and it always frustrates me that I don't hear something, I ask the person to repeat only to not hear it again
That's so you can lean in and get a little bit more friendly. Or go out for some fresh air together.
I’m in the same boat. My hearing has a dip around the 2-4khz range which makes speech unintelligible in many situations. Otherwise it seems normal and I still hear details in music that others can’t. Using Sony headphones in voice mode helps but I don’t carry them all day…
> 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.
People with some hearing loss can't hear consonants but vowels can be heard. I think that's why some people may assume they don't have a hearing problem.
My Mother has had poor hearing for decades. She listened to a radio as a kid she held it next to her ear at a loud volume. Now she often says she "can't stand noise" but it's because she can't hear in loud environments anymore due to hear hearing problems. I've noticed she misses the start of a sentences like if I said "I'm going to get some milk" she heard "got some milk" (as in I just got it). Or she interrupts people because she can't hear the first part of someone starting to speak most people tend to speak low at the start of a sentence.
As an older adult I've realised I most likely have ADHD - I've always struggled to focus in busy places, unless the person has my attention - as soon as we are in a group or people all talking or pitching in, and I can't focus on one face, I'm lost. My hearing is fine (I assume) - but I've come to realise I can't process information when there is too much going on.
My family will often have the TV on, games playing on phones, and talking too - I just can't hack it.
Equally the option to work from home has revolutionised my productivity - without having 10 things to filter out, I can just focus on getting the task in hand done. In an office I often get lost and distracted, and have to power through the noise.
A good hearing aid person or an audiologist can diagnose it. I found out that I likely have it, which explained alot of things in my life that I had experienced. In some scenarios, hearing aids can help, even though you don’t have a hearing problem per se.
I've found that wearing $10 off-the-shelf "musicians" or "high fidelity" earplugs in such spaces helps my ability to hear/understand a lot.
Yes, the stem sticks out, and everyone asks about them at least once, but I usually say something about wanting to "prevent tinnitus" and that it helps me hear them even better and they usually don't ask about it again.
I think that the problem of not hearing well in places like busy restaurants and bars is also often exacerbated by bad room acoustics. Acoustics are sadly an often overlooked factor when designing interior spaces (except for concert halls and such obviously).
Yeah, same. My hearing is absolutely not great, but "good enough", but in noisy environments I struggle. Given I'm fairly introvert to start with, on one hand, I'm perfectly at ease just checking out and sitting with my own thoughts if I can't hear a conversation, but when I do decide to come out with someone I'd prefer it to be easier to be more social instead of resorting to checking out.
> I'm not sure if their diagnostics sucks, or I'm just a normal person and others pretend better that they hear everything well
This is one of those frustrating gaslighting things that is half true in that half the time I also pretend to hear what someone else is saying even though I couldn’t just because it’s not really important and making a big deal about it (ie asking them to repeat it at continuously louder decibels) can get awkward.
One thing that the HN crowd should appreciate is just how expensive and shit hearing aids are.
go and look the up the price, they are deeply expensive, even for basic "make it louder" type aids.
Worse still, because they interfere with your ear, you tend to loose the ability to "steer" your hearing. This means that you can't tune out other conversations/noises or stuff.
The one good side effect of facebook spending billions on its (probably) futile search for practical and popular AR is https://www.projectaria.com/glasses/
Which is a (cheap) platform to do experimentation for AR type actions.
However it has eye tracking, microphone array and front facing cameras, so it can be fairly easily modified into being a steerable microphone.
As somebody who is hearing impaired, a feature like this would be a Godsend for me! This feature should be integrated into hearing-aids ASAP! Shut up - no, actually - keep talking and take my money!
And we almost all will be where you are now, if we live long enough.
If you can pick out audio from individuals, you could also send it through speech recognition and subtitle real world conversations for when hearing is worse or not there at all.
But it really needs mobile devices capable of doing the processing locally, as I think round trips to the cloud would make it less useful or potentially useless.
I have sensoneural hearing loss as well and fyi Bose Hearphones do have something a little like this with directional noise cancellation that helps a lot. They are discontinued but you can find them refurbished.
You should look into Luxottica's efforts in this category.
Wearable glasses are quite promising for the use case you mentioned, as they avoid the bulk and impoliteness of wearing headphones while talking to someone.
This but more advanced would quite nicely help with my tinnitus. I hear fine when one person is speaking (even softly and at a distance), but multiple or with music, I hear nothing.
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!
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 to isolate the wearer’s voice by virtue of that signal having more power than all the others.
This is terribly cool. I wonder what other kinds of fun you could have with headphones. ANC chipsets are incredibly powerful and I’d wager their capabilities are not even close to fully tapped.
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 my voice to the recipient.
This could actually be really helpful to me, as I have trouble hearing someone speaking in a busy room because my mind is trying to pick up everything (I think this is because of my ADHD). Having a way to significantly quiet out other noises aside for the voice of the person I'm speaking with would be amazing.
Ditto. I would pay big money for this if it came in an inconspicuous form factor like airpods. Hopefully it's just a matter of time before Airpods themselves can do this.
I'm having the same problem, my hearing is fine but talking to people in busy clubs or cafe's is next to impossible for me. This feature would be a blessing for me!
i don't know much about adhd/autism, but i'm pretty sure i'm somewhat autistic and have this problem really really bad. i score fine on hearing tests where i just have to listen for quiet beeps but have a lot of trouble processing what people are saying especially in a crowded setting. my dad also has this issue
A potential feature I didn't know I needed. Have headphones with ANC on around home all the time, would be really useful if it auto passthrough my partners voice.
I asked gpt to translate for me the lyrics of a recent popular song containing the word "puta" and it just refused "I'm sorry, I can't help you with that". When I insisted it just ended the conversation.
Imagine it helping people with Autism and ADHD! ADHD people have hard time listening to 1 person because part of the brain tries to listen to all other conversations going around.
This remembers me of NVIDIA RTX Voice [0].
Although not made to isolate single persons, this is quite impressive.
I hope that this single person isolation will find it's way to consumer noise-cancelling headphones
I used to think of building something related to let a mic pick up a single person to handle questions from the audience, during presentations. Will save the hassle of passing around mics.
This looks like it could do just that with the headphones feeding directly into the mixer and behaving like a focused mic.
When I was a youngling, I dreamed of having headphones with the opposite power -- muting specific people. For me, it's not the hubbub of a crowd that's distracting, it's usually one or two offending specimens - like in the video example, the inconsiderate vermin using a speakerphone in public.
I wonder if the problem maps easily from "select this source" to "select everything but that source"
How much is the AI necessary for this? At least for the targeting of sounds in the line of sight, that should be fairly easy to do without AI, but I don’t know about the human voice identification.
The concept of headphones in the last 60 years, with the exception of sound quality, comfort, and eventually being cordless.... they have not changed much in terms of style and appearance.
However, I think in the next 50 years, headphones will disappear or.. should I say evolve as part of the human anatomy. Same thing for screen monitors, mouse/keyboard, smartphones, etc.
Think about it. The way things are going, along with "AI" (sure buzzword in a number of ways but something that will change our way of living) many of things we use will be replaced and, likely, be simple extensions or, dare I say, be implanted.
Hard drives will be a thing of the past. Everything will be (as we call today) "cloud-based" and we will be more cybernetic than we think. Of course, someone today will fear such an idea. As we slowly accept the little changes.. in 50 years we will look back and think "how did they cope without it"... a bit like how someone today look back and think "how did they cope without the internet"
Many fear what they dont understand. It is the unknown. AI is a fear factor for many. For me, I accept it for what it is and the changes it will impact our lives and our careers.
All I will say is -- strap yourselves in.. it will be a bumpy ride. I hope we make it through without destroying ourselves. Once we past it, the world could (finally) be at peace and to quote a famous TV show --- "to bondly go where no man has gone before!"
This reminds me a lot of https://github.com/xiph/rnnoise and my use of it locally. It zeroes in on voice via RNN which seems to beat most other noise detection filters I've tried. Unfortunately, I mostly disable it these days since it's a bit harder to tune than I'm up for, but it's by far the most promising local noise reduction I've used.
[+] [-] serial_dev|1 year ago|reply
In groups and with friends, it's inevitable that you end up in a busy restaurant or a bar, and 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 (considering the circumstances). Missing jokes and throwaway comments is even worse ("hey what are you all laughing about, I didn't hear it, could you repeat it for me like three times until I hear it").
[+] [-] superultra|1 year ago|reply
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 hearing was beyond great, it was at the level of a 5 year old. The bad news: I could hear so well I was unable to differentiate sound; my hearing hadn’t gotten worse, my brain’s ability to separate sound had. The good bad news is that my hearing would inevitably deteriorate, as all ours does, and for several years I’d be able hear in public places!
I think part of what has made this worse is that restaurant and public space designers have stopped thinking about sound. Most bars opened in the last 15 years have cement floors, very little sound insulation, and they’re based on the idea that you’re not having a good time unless your ears are ringing.
I’ve stopped patronizing these places if only because I literally cannot maintain conversations.
[+] [-] wruza|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Pxtl|1 year ago|reply
They're not perfect, but the fact that I can move smoothly from "I need my ears open but still want to hear my headset" to "I need to block out sound and hear my headset perfectly clearly" with just a finger or a pair of earplugs is great.
Stick a shotgun mic (that's the term for a mic with tight directional cone, right? Not an audio guy) on the side and this would be really cool.
[+] [-] totetsu|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] ddmf|1 year ago|reply
Every time I looked into this, it seemed to push the link with autism and/or adhd - back in 2008 I wasn't diagnosed so I poo-pooed the idea somewhat. Now I'm diagnosed as AuDHD.
[+] [-] nashashmi|1 year ago|reply
1. Don't speak fast. Speak slow. Enunciate and articulate all the consonants. And do it very slowly. Give the vowels lots of room to be noticed.
2. Don't speak lightly.
3. Don't mumble.
Aayyeee hHHaaaVVE TTOOO GOOO NNAAAoooUUU
[+] [-] carlosjobim|1 year ago|reply
That's so you can lean in and get a little bit more friendly. Or go out for some fresh air together.
[+] [-] ricardobeat|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] rayxi271828|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Pxtl|1 year ago|reply
Other person: *mumble mumble* SOMETHING CLEARLY SPOKEN
Me: I'm sorry, what?
Them: "clearly spoken?"
Me: No, the first part.
Them: "something?"
Me, giving up: *smiles and nods* Yeah!
(quietly hopes I didn't just agree that putting hamsters in blenders or something is a cool idea)
[+] [-] dghughes|1 year ago|reply
My Mother has had poor hearing for decades. She listened to a radio as a kid she held it next to her ear at a loud volume. Now she often says she "can't stand noise" but it's because she can't hear in loud environments anymore due to hear hearing problems. I've noticed she misses the start of a sentences like if I said "I'm going to get some milk" she heard "got some milk" (as in I just got it). Or she interrupts people because she can't hear the first part of someone starting to speak most people tend to speak low at the start of a sentence.
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ljf|1 year ago|reply
My family will often have the TV on, games playing on phones, and talking too - I just can't hack it.
Equally the option to work from home has revolutionised my productivity - without having 10 things to filter out, I can just focus on getting the task in hand done. In an office I often get lost and distracted, and have to power through the noise.
[+] [-] Spooky23|1 year ago|reply
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/auditory-proc...
A good hearing aid person or an audiologist can diagnose it. I found out that I likely have it, which explained alot of things in my life that I had experienced. In some scenarios, hearing aids can help, even though you don’t have a hearing problem per se.
[+] [-] cbhl|1 year ago|reply
Yes, the stem sticks out, and everyone asks about them at least once, but I usually say something about wanting to "prevent tinnitus" and that it helps me hear them even better and they usually don't ask about it again.
[+] [-] dasKrokodil|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] aquafox|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] vidarh|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] foobarian|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] dnpls|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] nolongerthere|1 year ago|reply
This is one of those frustrating gaslighting things that is half true in that half the time I also pretend to hear what someone else is saying even though I couldn’t just because it’s not really important and making a big deal about it (ie asking them to repeat it at continuously louder decibels) can get awkward.
[+] [-] KaiserPro|1 year ago|reply
go and look the up the price, they are deeply expensive, even for basic "make it louder" type aids.
Worse still, because they interfere with your ear, you tend to loose the ability to "steer" your hearing. This means that you can't tune out other conversations/noises or stuff.
The one good side effect of facebook spending billions on its (probably) futile search for practical and popular AR is https://www.projectaria.com/glasses/
Which is a (cheap) platform to do experimentation for AR type actions.
However it has eye tracking, microphone array and front facing cameras, so it can be fairly easily modified into being a steerable microphone.
[+] [-] CodeCompost|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] stubish|1 year ago|reply
If you can pick out audio from individuals, you could also send it through speech recognition and subtitle real world conversations for when hearing is worse or not there at all.
But it really needs mobile devices capable of doing the processing locally, as I think round trips to the cloud would make it less useful or potentially useless.
[+] [-] gedy|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] camillomiller|1 year ago|reply
>> https://www.cnet.com/health/medical/what-did-you-say-these-e...
[+] [-] anonzzzies|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] toomuchtodo|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] foreigner|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] cushychicken|1 year ago|reply
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 to isolate the wearer’s voice by virtue of that signal having more power than all the others.
This is terribly cool. I wonder what other kinds of fun you could have with headphones. ANC chipsets are incredibly powerful and I’d wager their capabilities are not even close to fully tapped.
[+] [-] polartx|1 year ago|reply
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 my voice to the recipient.
[+] [-] OkGoDoIt|1 year ago|reply
So perhaps this is not as out of reach as many pop-science articles. I’d love to hear if anyone is able to get this working independently.
[+] [-] chabad360|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] nsypteras|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] misja111|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] whimsicalism|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] maxglute|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] gexla|1 year ago|reply
I use a lot of curse words. ;)
[+] [-] hfjtifkenf|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] keploy|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] i5heu|1 year ago|reply
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWUHkCgslNE
[+] [-] astatine|1 year ago|reply
This looks like it could do just that with the headphones feeding directly into the mixer and behaving like a focused mic.
[+] [-] btbuildem|1 year ago|reply
I wonder if the problem maps easily from "select this source" to "select everything but that source"
[+] [-] amusingimpala75|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] 29athrowaway|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] adwi|1 year ago|reply
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocktail_party_effect
[+] [-] masfoobar|1 year ago|reply
However, I think in the next 50 years, headphones will disappear or.. should I say evolve as part of the human anatomy. Same thing for screen monitors, mouse/keyboard, smartphones, etc.
Think about it. The way things are going, along with "AI" (sure buzzword in a number of ways but something that will change our way of living) many of things we use will be replaced and, likely, be simple extensions or, dare I say, be implanted.
Hard drives will be a thing of the past. Everything will be (as we call today) "cloud-based" and we will be more cybernetic than we think. Of course, someone today will fear such an idea. As we slowly accept the little changes.. in 50 years we will look back and think "how did they cope without it"... a bit like how someone today look back and think "how did they cope without the internet"
Many fear what they dont understand. It is the unknown. AI is a fear factor for many. For me, I accept it for what it is and the changes it will impact our lives and our careers.
All I will say is -- strap yourselves in.. it will be a bumpy ride. I hope we make it through without destroying ourselves. Once we past it, the world could (finally) be at peace and to quote a famous TV show --- "to bondly go where no man has gone before!"
[+] [-] andrewstuart2|1 year ago|reply