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Krisp.ai – Mute background noise during your calls
- nathannecro 8y agoHow do they make money? All audio is processed on device, but is the goal to use the public training/learning to tailor a more robust model which they can sell commercially/integrate into apps/phones/etc?
- otterley 8y agoMy suspicion is that the founders/engineers will be acqui-hired for a not-insignificant sum by one of the existing big players in the teleconference space (Zoom, Google, Cisco, etc.).
- ixtli 8y agoFurther, this is probably their goal. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if Apple bought something like this as system-wide background noise canceling would be a fantastic OS feature.
- asperous 8y agoiPhones already have this feature if you hold your phone up to your ear. There is a microphone in the back of the phone near the camera that phase cancels out background noise from the input from the front mic.
- agotterer 8y agoThey need this for the AirPods then. Everyone I call while outside in NYC says the microphone is super sensitive and picks up all the surrounding noise.
- shemtovo 8y agoThey just filled that patent. 5 mics on the device for beam for separation
- ixtli 8y agoThat's really cool! I knew that it did sound canceling but I thought it was all software!
- Antrikshy 8y agoI remember when they proudly talked about all the mics on the iPhone 5 used for this when they presented it on stage.
- mygo 8y agothey also recently added 4 (or 5?) mics on the new iPad Pro so that it could do facetime calls while cancelling out the feedback. Wouldn’t be surprised if a software update makes it possible to use all of those mics for some very good ambient noise cancellation during face time calls
- villgax 8y agoMaybe they can do semi-dense audio cancelling with some ML model for cancellation on a Mac as well.
- partiallypro 8y agoOr they hope to license this and have it built into every service by default.
- polalavik 8y agofrom the other site below which also seems to be them they charge per minute of processed audio. https://2hz.ai/api/index.html https://2hz.ai/api/index.html
- aviv 8y agoGetting acquired by Dialpad in 3, 2, 1..
- nathannecro 8y agoFolks, one of the devs — artavazdm — has commented below and has stated: "It's only free during beta. Although we haven't decided on the exact monetization strategy yet."
- lotyrin 8y ago"Seemless calls", so my calls won't seem? Seem to be what? What would it mean for something to be seemful? Edit: I know it's a typo, but I figured it's a door to somewhat interesting line of linguistic thought. You could have "seemful" which might be somewhat synonymous with "inauthentic" and "seemless" which might be in with "genuine"?
- mises 8y agoHere's to hoping they make a version for Windows and/or Linux. Mac support is nice, but this seems business-focused (though handy for casual use). Most businesses, especially outside of Silicon Valley, don't use Mac; Windows will likely be a larger market.
- awkim 8y agoI'm hoping for an iOS/Android version.
- davitb 8y agoMobile support is harder since Krisp won't be able to register as a virtual mic/speaker on Android or iOS. At least we haven't found any way around it.
- mises 8y agoThere's an app for Android called SoundAbout, which can reroute audio. Not sure how it works, but maybe something similar is possible for Krisp? https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.woodslink.android.wiredheadphoneroutingfix&hl=en_US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.woodslink....
- stoobs 8y agodouble-edged sword - bug Apple enough and you might get support, or bought..
- nss00 8y agoThe scrum meeting sample with the loud keyboard felt all to real. Look forward to trying it out next time I'm working at a coffee shop.
- vosper 8y agoI had been wondering when a product like this would come along. Being able to remove background noise from calls sounds pretty great, but it's not a problem I run into too often - most people on my calls are in a meeting room or a quiet place. But, if it can really fill in missing or distorted chunks then for me that's a killer feature. I'm going to give it a try on my morning check-in call, which is coming up. I'd love to see a product like this be able to adapt to the voices of individual speakers, and fill in gaps or distortion in their natural voices. I presume that would be more difficult, though, because you'd need a model of each speaker at the output device, so both parties would need to be running Krisp, and you'd somehow have to share the model between them - which if you already have network issues causing dropouts and distoration might not be feasible. Unless it was a side-channel thing, where for regular calls with the same people the voice model for is updated after each call, ready for the next one. Though I'm not sure I love the idea of a model of my voice being constructed and transmitted around. But I think it would be really cool :)
- blparker 8y agoMake sure you check back in with the results!
- vosper 8y agoAs requested: This call typically has decent audio quality, and as it's a stand-up / status call people tend to speak one at a time. No-one today had much in the way of background noise, so I'm not sure there was a lot of opportunity for the app to show off. That said, I switched the Krisp speaker mode on and off repeatedly while each person who was talking. 1. When just one person was talking Krisp didn't seem to ever make the sound worse, which I guess is a start. 2. When there was a conversation going back and forth, or when one person started talking right after someone else finished, the voices got mangled or muted and I couldn't understand them. I had to turn Krisp off. 3. When there was some background echo (like in a large room) or some minor distortion I thought it maybe sounded a bit clearer with Krisp running, but it didn't really make much difference. I could understand the speaker either way. With the audio problems I mentioned at (2) and no real gain from using Krisp I doubt I would use it regularly, though if I run into a call with bad background noise I might try it again. I also tried the Krisp microphone, and at one point I had to repeat myself, which doesn't usually happen. But I have no way of knowing whether that was due to me speaking unclearly, or audio issues at the listeners end, or something else. So I don't really have an opinion about the microphone, but as I am in a quiet place anyway I wouldn't probably use it. It would be nice if there was a single channel evaluation mode for the speaker. If I could hear in my right ear the normal audio was, and in the left what the Krisp-processed sound, then I would have a better chance of evaluating the performance. I guess if you have a lot of continuous background noise that mode would be redundant, and it should be an obvious improvement switching back and forth.
- faragon 8y agoHow much latency does it add?
- davitb 8y agoAround 15ms to the end to end call.
- amelius 8y agoBut I want to mute people who make phonecalls in the train ...
- dylanpyle 8y agoFirst app in a long time that I've downloaded within 5 seconds of hearing the pitch. Seriously looks too good to be true.
- MehdiHK 8y agoIs it possible to use something like this to turn any headphone into noise canceling headphone?
- davitb 8y agoNot really. The tech used in noise-cancelling headphones is called ANC (active noise cancellation). It eliminates the noise coming to your ear from your surrounding environment. In contrast, Krisp eliminates the noise going from your environment to the call participants and vice versa.
- djreynolds 8y agoHow would the application know what's noises are being made in the environment around you?
- iamrafael8 8y agowaiting the app for the mobiles. ai does nit stop to amaze the community
- _underflow_ 8y agoI'd really like to see this technique applied to remastering e.g. songs from vinyl records. Similar to that project to colorize old photos with a GAN, but in audio form. [1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18456527 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18456527
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- TatWakie 8y agoA dream product for new parents working from home :)
- RafaelBaghyan 8y agoGreat idea,great product, great TEAM.
- myth2018 8y agoAs an amateur radio operator, I struggle very often with noise-related issues. Nice tech. I'm used to see digital processing applying in this field, but never thought about applying machine learning. Feeling curious about learning about the technology some day, because, for me, based on the solutions I currently know, this seems, indeed, magic.
- LeicaLatte 8y agoCan you make a plugin for Garageband?
- rcthompson 8y agoI'd be a little worried about the feature that fills in missing voice chunks. It sounds ripe for accidentally replacing one lost word with a completely different word that could also make sense in context. Almost like the issue where Xerox copiers would sometimes replace one character with another. Hopefully the filling in of missing chunks is done in a way that doesn't allow it to fill in whole words, but rather just short sub-syllable chunks of audio?
- stcredzero 8y agoIt sounds ripe for accidentally replacing one lost word with a completely different word that could also make sense in context. For awhile, it seemed like the autocorrection in iOS was deliberately trying to break up me and my then-girlfriend. It even seemed to have a penchant for doing an unfortunate autocorrect just a sliver of a second before my finger hit send on a txt. I finally turned the feature off.
- michaelmior 8y agoJust tried the Skype call testing service with and without Krisp while mashing on my keyboard. It did seem to almost eliminate the typing sounds which were rather loud otherwise.
- fspacef 8y agoExcited to check this out but looks like it's got the HN Hug. Going to recommended this to my dad who always takes calls from noisy airports.
- president 8y agoI just tried this over a Zoom call. It worked well but not as well as the samples on their website would make you believe. Background noise was muted during silence periods but not always during speech from the active speaker. This makes it even more annoying because you hear tidbits of background noise only at the same time that the active speaker is speaking. I'm still very impressed though.
- rcthompson 8y agoIs there a way to run an existing audio file through this to clean it up? For example, if I have a video of a presentation with lots of background noise like chairs creaking, people coughing, etc.?
- zwarag 8y agoSure you can. I don't think anybody can stop you doing that. You just need 2 computers. On one you play the clip. On the other you record it. The remove the audio from the video and put the new audio onto it.
- rcthompson 8y agoYes, of course I can run my audio file through it by actually playing it and recording the result, but I'm asking if there's a version of this tool that takes an input file and writes to an output file on its own.
- artavazdsm 8y agoHere is demo link that you can use for that purpose. https://demo.2hz.ai/ https://demo.2hz.ai/ We are also building web and iOS apps to cancel the noise in the files.
- Dumbdo 8y agoNice, it's especially notable for loud noise (which otherwise triggers voice activation) while not talking
- rcthompson 8y agoCool! I thought I had a test recording for this, but (un?)fortunately, my workplace sprung for a fancy directional mic that already did a very good job of isolating the speaker's voice. I still plan to play with the app for voice chat, though.
- djreynolds 8y agoThey have an API: https://2hz.ai/api/index.html https://2hz.ai/api/index.html You have to apply for it and it's apparently priced per minute. I applied and I'm waiting for pricing info.
- sirfz 8y agoThis looks nice, I hope we can get a Linux version too
- colechristensen 8y agoIsn't the real solution having two or more microphones and using the multiple signals to locate and isolate the desired sound?
- httpsterio 8y agoYes, that's how phone microphones for example work. To remove static background noice would just need to get a silent sample and reverse out the polarity of the static noise from the audio signal. It can be done real-time or in post production. To sum out random background sounds you would need an omnidirectional mic that picks up everything. Then you'd need a close range shotgun type mic from which you subtract all that noise mix picks out.
- colechristensen 8y agoWhat I am thinking of is more is using signal phase differences on spatially separated similar microphones to isolate the desired source and filter the rest. There is probably a name for this I wouldn't remember. You wouldn't need a specific directional mic and could instead build a synthetic virtual microphone with whatever directional properties you wanted (including distance and not just directional selection)
- def_true_false 8y agoBeamforming?
- eeZah7Ux 8y ago*noise
- zwarag 8y agoWill this stay free or is it only free during beta?
- artavazdsm 8y agoIt's only free during beta. Although we haven't decided on the exact monetization strategy yet.
- jamesjyu 8y agoMy first internship was at a company that was doing this over a decade ago, but before machine learning had proliferated to adjacent fields. It's easy to separate out stationary signals like ambient noise, which are easily isolated in the frequency domain. But it's a totally different thing to remove something like a baby's cry, shuffling of papers, or other sharp transients. Blindly separating without a large corpus of inputs + machine learning techniques seems impossible. I remember as intern spending hours in front of spectrograms manually deleting noise so that the researchers could get clean targets. Let me tell you, I started being able to identify a lot of phonemes just by visually examining waveforms. Eventually, the company did pursue some noise cancellation, but only as one part of their offering. I don't think they ever could get the holy grail of separating non-stationary noise.
- hantusk 8y agoThere is a new paper out from Google research that specifically addresses the use case with screaming children in the background - very exciting! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zL6ltnSKf9k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zL6ltnSKf9k
- davitb 8y agoKrisp removes screaming child noise quite well. This was a sensitive use case for the team since I (CEO/krisp) had a baby 3 days ago and really needed Krisp to do my calls :)
- stcredzero 8y agoSomething I'd like to see if a voice recorder that only records my own voice. It would be even better if other voices were obliterated and filled over with something like the "voice" noise from Katamari Damacy.
- usgroup 8y agoI wish this was possible in the mobile ... I have this problem on a regular basis...
- toolz 8y agoawesome app! Might wanna correct the grammer for the unfurl description though <meta name="description" content="Take calls from wherever you want without being embarassed for a background noise. Get krisp for Mac and use with any conferecing app!">
- aaronsnoswell 8y agoI've read the front page and FAQ section but I'm still not 100% clear what this product is. Is it an active noise cancelling app that listens to your environment around the laptop and cancels noise out (like Bose QC25/35 headphones)? Serious comment - I think you need to explain this better on your site.
- bryanh 8y agoI've been using http://mizage.com/shush/ http://mizage.com/shush/ for macOS push to talk. Highly recommended.
- nexuslab 8y agoWorks pretty awesome!!! Can be a life-saver app!
- ohanyan 8y agoIt’s great for taking conference calls from the coffee shop
- joshfraser 8y agoIt would be nice if I could upload audio and have it processed. I have a lot of videos that were captured on an iphone or something and would love a tool to help clean up the audio track before posting.
- villgax 8y agoThere is noise reduction(w/ templates) in Movie & it does a decent job. You can also try out audacity & gate noise below a certain threshold for crisper audio.
- lasky 8y agoMake this work on a mobile device for phone calls for business people and you're in the money! Finding quiet space to make phone calls is a hassle.
- userbinator 8y agoI have a generic Android phone and its lack of background noise was quite surprising, so either it has active noise canceling or an extremely short-range mic. I suspect most if not all of them already have such functionality.
- martimarkov 8y agoI’ll try this tomorrow with airline lane recordings from a black box. It would be interesting to see what will happen.
- earth2mars 8y agoOMG! this is awesome. I just tested and it works wonderfully! It just mutes all background noise (White noise, tv sound, toy sound, kids crying, people eating..) just wonderful.
- gyvastis 8y agoI'd like to see this work with a music app and replace the need of buying expensive noise-cancelling headphones.
- saifsadiq1995 8y agoGreat!! Is it useful in an audio recording in a noisy area as well? I'll give it a spin and see if it helps.
- blazespin 8y agoMost useful for me would be speech to text in a conference call.
- rcthompson 8y agoThis seems like it would be useful as a pre-processing step before feeding audio to a speech-to-text engine.
- blizkreeg 8y agoI've been waiting for something like this, except now I want it to be embedded in my bluetooth earphones. They all suck at removing background noise when I'm speaking on a call. Will this work well even if I'm speaking into my airpods?
- thr0w__4w4y 8y agoSeems to me that "a virtual microphone [that] sits between your device microphone and Apps" would be a juicy target for attack I am /not/ saying Krisp.ai is a trojan or is nefarious, but if I was the NSA or FSB or... something like this would be very interesting to me. Both for infiltration (deliberately malicious) or for exploitation (compromised / exploited at run time).
- delvikt 8y agoThis would be really great for work-at-home people, freelancers, and digital nomads! I work online for a startup and this is exactly the kind of thing I can think we could all use. Another niche that could benefit from this would be online teaching. Most of the teachers of online English teaching companies work from home. For work at home parents (and there are plenty), the mute whining/screaming child feature is a godsend. Fingers crossed, waiting for Windows support...