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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 p

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!

devjab 2y ago
I think this is the wildest “I guess I’m” old moment I’ve experienced… Do people wear headphones at parties?
- kortilla 2y ago
  No?
- SllX 2y ago
  Not unless it’s a silent disco or you’re the DJ.
- resolutebat 2y ago
  People (well, teenagers) wil.wear headphones to the dinner table if you let them.
  - balfirevic 2y ago
    That makes much more sense than wearing them at the party.
- aqme28 2y ago
  I guess you’re not old enough. This sounds like a feature for hearing aids.
  - devjab 2y ago
    When you’re old you can just turn them off entirely. Who’s you got talking to you at a party you want to hear anyway?
- swiftcoder 2y ago
  Folks who are hearing impaired do. And that's increasingly more of us as we age.
- funki 2y ago
  I know a few people on the spectrum using ANR headphones or earbuds in social or loud settings (party/bar/restaurant/subway) to lower the ambient noise, just as you would wear a pear of sunglasses in the sun or on a brightly-lit stage. To them, it is a welcome fix to the alternative they had before: be exhausted by the stimulation, or stay home. The tendency of "the young" to do it too is a bonus: now they don't stand out so much.
bdowling 2y ago
Being able to selectively mute people was an element in a couple of Black Mirror episodes.
- latexr 2y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Christmas_(Black_Mirror) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Christmas_(Black_Mirror)
nolok 2y ago
For something that you could actually sell in volume, you may not be thinking large enough in terms of "party". It's common to wear ear plugs at concerts, to avoid destroying your ears. Not imagine replacing those ear plugs with in-ear headphones that filter everything except your family/friends and the concert, while regulating the volume (if your SO talks to you make that one voice loud over the rest), maybe keep the "crowd noise" going with the flow but remove normal conversations for people around, etc ... I'm not in ML/AI/etc ... At all but my understanding is that none of that is actually impossible with current tech ? Sure the battery and power limits exists, but this is a concert those headphone with a "band" going behind your head to keep them in place / not lose them if it falls makes sense. Would need some training for "your voice" but if alexa can do it in 10 seconds then a phone app can do that too. Hell, if it existed for movies theater at below 200€ I would probably buy one right now and maybe go to the movies again.
- spi 2y ago
  I'm into AI but not into sound, so I might be saying something stupid here, but I think using something like this for very high volume like concerts would be possibly outright impossible, but, even if not, certainly quite dangerous and therefore not commercializable. My understanding is that to "mute" a sound, you need to inject another wave that is exactly the opposite, with the exact same volume and in perfect sync, so that the two waves interfere destructively. However, in general but especially in AI, you can never guarantee 100% accuracy. If you use this technology to "silence" a background fountain, and something goes wrong, at worst you get a lot of noise that make you grimace and remove them. If at a concert with 100+ dB of music you get an error and your headphones start producing a similarly loud, but not perfectly aligned noise right into your ears, you probably won't have the time to remove them before damaging your hearing system. In general, I think that having a tool that drives 100+ dB straight into your head is probably not a wise idea :-)
  - giantg2 2y ago
    It probably wouldn't work for in-ear setups. However, I'd you have over the ear headphones with good passive noise canceling (35db) then you would need less of the active canceling (65db) to make it quiet and safe.
foobiekr 2y ago
There's also a pretty useful criminal application of listening in on people without them knowing.
planckscnst 2y ago
That one person who laughs so loud it's painful even though I'm 15 feet away, and they laugh like 3x per minute continuously... drives me up the wall. Yeah, I'd definitely appreciate a way to tune them out!

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!

devjab 2y ago

I think this is the wildest “I guess I’m” old moment I’ve experienced… Do people wear headphones at parties?

kortilla 2y ago
No?
SllX 2y ago
Not unless it’s a silent disco or you’re the DJ.
resolutebat 2y ago
People (well, teenagers) wil.wear headphones to the dinner table if you let them.
- balfirevic 2y ago
  That makes much more sense than wearing them at the party.
aqme28 2y ago
I guess you’re not old enough. This sounds like a feature for hearing aids.
- devjab 2y ago
  When you’re old you can just turn them off entirely. Who’s you got talking to you at a party you want to hear anyway?
swiftcoder 2y ago
Folks who are hearing impaired do. And that's increasingly more of us as we age.
funki 2y ago
I know a few people on the spectrum using ANR headphones or earbuds in social or loud settings (party/bar/restaurant/subway) to lower the ambient noise, just as you would wear a pear of sunglasses in the sun or on a brightly-lit stage. To them, it is a welcome fix to the alternative they had before: be exhausted by the stimulation, or stay home. The tendency of "the young" to do it too is a bonus: now they don't stand out so much.

bdowling 2y ago

Being able to selectively mute people was an element in a couple of Black Mirror episodes.

latexr 2y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Christmas_(Black_Mirror) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Christmas_(Black_Mirror)

nolok 2y ago

For something that you could actually sell in volume, you may not be thinking large enough in terms of "party". It's common to wear ear plugs at concerts, to avoid destroying your ears. Not imagine replacing those ear plugs with in-ear headphones that filter everything except your family/friends and the concert, while regulating the volume (if your SO talks to you make that one voice loud over the rest), maybe keep the "crowd noise" going with the flow but remove normal conversations for people around, etc ... I'm not in ML/AI/etc ... At all but my understanding is that none of that is actually impossible with current tech ? Sure the battery and power limits exists, but this is a concert those headphone with a "band" going behind your head to keep them in place / not lose them if it falls makes sense. Would need some training for "your voice" but if alexa can do it in 10 seconds then a phone app can do that too. Hell, if it existed for movies theater at below 200€ I would probably buy one right now and maybe go to the movies again.

spi 2y ago
I'm into AI but not into sound, so I might be saying something stupid here, but I think using something like this for very high volume like concerts would be possibly outright impossible, but, even if not, certainly quite dangerous and therefore not commercializable. My understanding is that to "mute" a sound, you need to inject another wave that is exactly the opposite, with the exact same volume and in perfect sync, so that the two waves interfere destructively. However, in general but especially in AI, you can never guarantee 100% accuracy. If you use this technology to "silence" a background fountain, and something goes wrong, at worst you get a lot of noise that make you grimace and remove them. If at a concert with 100+ dB of music you get an error and your headphones start producing a similarly loud, but not perfectly aligned noise right into your ears, you probably won't have the time to remove them before damaging your hearing system. In general, I think that having a tool that drives 100+ dB straight into your head is probably not a wise idea :-)
- giantg2 2y ago
  It probably wouldn't work for in-ear setups. However, I'd you have over the ear headphones with good passive noise canceling (35db) then you would need less of the active canceling (65db) to make it quiet and safe.

foobiekr 2y ago

There's also a pretty useful criminal application of listening in on people without them knowing.

planckscnst 2y ago

That one person who laughs so loud it's painful even though I'm 15 feet away, and they laugh like 3x per minute continuously... drives me up the wall. Yeah, I'd definitely appreciate a way to tune them out!