[HN Gopher] AI headphones let wearer listen to a single person i...
___________________________________________________________________
AI headphones let wearer listen to a single person in a crowd by
looking at them
Author : keploy
Score : 865 points
Date : 2024-05-29 03:52 UTC (19 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.washington.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.washington.edu)
| keploy wrote:
| I hope it's not just a prototype press release, will help people
| with hearing loss..
| dralley wrote:
| I bet the CIA would love this, too
| ohmyiv wrote:
| It is just a proof of concept, but they released the source
| code so others can build on it. Hopefully someone will create
| something cool, but not charge a ridiculous markup.
| Reptur wrote:
| Could be a game changer for people with auditory processing
| disorder too.
| loeg wrote:
| It's academic research -- very much not productized yet.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Code: https://github.com/vb000/LookOnceToHear
| chabad360 wrote:
| 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.
| misja111 wrote:
| 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!
| nsypteras wrote:
| 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.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| 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
| 23B1 wrote:
| A useful tool for when you need to surveil a shady multinational
| called Quantum while they discuss their evil plan during a
| performance of Tosca.
| swayvil wrote:
| Now do the same thing with video.
|
| Turn anything into a mirror, or something like that.
| maxglute wrote:
| 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.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| The opposite would be nice too. Silence specifically this
| source (probably not your partner, though maybe....)
| pyeri wrote:
| "Just block or mute their account, eh.." would be carried to
| a whole new level - in actual life!
| pests wrote:
| This is close to a Black Mirror episode. Z-Eyes anyone?
| Z-Ears?
| latentsea wrote:
| Black Mirror was a documentary.
| seoulmetro wrote:
| Most episodes are just slightly more invasive and
| unrealistic versions of technology we have had for ages
| rather than the usual "they saw the future".
| pests wrote:
| I think you are being too dismissive.
|
| We watch ads, not by force, but voluntarily for free
| services or currencies in mobile games. Politicians can
| do basically whatever they want. We have cameras and even
| glasses that record everything we do. V-Tubers are more
| popular by the minute. People get blackmailed for their
| online activities, wrong as they might be. Kids walk
| around with parent-forced app's to track their location
| and online life. Robot dogs are being sold to the public
| and being used by the military. People care more about
| filming something or the documentary than the event
| itself.
| voidUpdate wrote:
| Just to nitpick one point, I personally think we've
| passed the peak of popularity for vtubers and it will
| settle down to a slightly lower level. Having been one
| myself, I've seen the other side and I think a
| combination of lockdown and the launch of Holo-EN made a
| lot of people try it, before realising it didn't work for
| them
| bubblebeard wrote:
| Haha yeah that would certainly be useful in some situations
| xD
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| I would be happy with ANC with a doorbell passthrough. Missed
| a few package deliveries this way. But maybe that could also
| be achieved with a desktop notification.
| ikari_pl wrote:
| you can enable doorbell sound notification in Android
| aspenmayer wrote:
| You can also do this on iOS and iPadOS as well as AVP
| with support for training custom sound recognition.
|
| https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/use-sound-
| recognition...
| surfingdino wrote:
| Every teen's dream of muting their yakking mother would
| finally come true.
| xeromal wrote:
| lol. My partner and I share a home office and I've worn ear
| plugs + my range headphones (or my bose 700s) and I can still
| hear her clacking away and talking on meetings. I'm sure I'm
| some kind of spaz but god I wish I had something that could
| completely mute all sounds except my rain sounds. lol
| skydhash wrote:
| You want iems. The same kind of earphones musicians wear on
| sets. The cons is that they can be uncomfortable for long
| periods. I'm right next to a night club and I'm glad I have
| a pair lying around.
| xeromal wrote:
| Thank you, I'll check these out. I'm willing to pay a
| pretty penny at this point.
| seoulmetro wrote:
| I feel like overuse of ANC is going to come with some sort of
| physical or physiological drawback soon or too late.
| ffsm8 wrote:
| Highly doubtful, it's just a microphones and the speakers
| that emit inverted sound waves.
|
| This is one of the safest technologies I can imagine.
|
| It's more likely that the radio waves from wireless
| communication (phones, Bluetooth headphones etc) will have
| negative impact, but even that's unlikely at this point,
| considering how widespread their use is and no statistically
| significant link exists.
| maxglute wrote:
| I thought so, but I live in pretty quiet neighbourhood with
| ~8 hours of ANC which enables quietter playback volume,
| versus growing up in a very loud metropolis where bustle was
| non stop and blasting headphones in before ANC days.
|
| TBH at this point, I wouldn't even object to losing my
| hearing to have forever ANC (hearing loss) and turning up the
| hearing aid.
|
| E: no offense to those with hearing loss in this thread
| doctor_eval wrote:
| Yeah I recently lost a chunk of hearing and all I can say
| is, you will miss it.
|
| Much better to wear headphones than to need hearing aids
| (also: some forms of hearing loss aren't helped by hearing
| aids. Mine, for example).
| flakeoil wrote:
| Physically/physiological I doubt there are any issues, but
| maybe psychologically or sociologically.
| flakeoil wrote:
| ANC does not block voices. It's probably passive sound
| protection in your headphones that causes your partner's voice
| to sound weak and not go through to your ear. Or plain and
| simple, just the music you listen to that masks the voice.
|
| The only case ANC would block your partners voice would be if
| it is about as high/low level as the background noise/sound so
| that it is all mixed into a white or colored noise which ANC
| can suppress.
| astatine wrote:
| 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.
| CodeCompost wrote:
| 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!
| gedy wrote:
| 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.
| gertlex wrote:
| My phonak HAs have some directional noise cancellation (or
| biasing at least; I don't have rigorous definitions for these
| terms)... It helps but isn't great.
|
| Has a problem that I think the AI headphones wouldn't solve
| either: in a (non-quiet) group setting you still need to
| anticipate who's going to speak when and look at them for
| best results.
|
| The direction bit is just biasing to preferring forward stuff
| (via two mics on each ear's HA).
|
| Sadly, no backwards bias option for overhearing people behind
| you ;)
| Angostura wrote:
| Version 3 will be able to analyse a room for interesting
| conversation and then control where you are looking via
| neuralink.
| richrichardsson wrote:
| > Sadly, no backwards bias option for overhearing people
| behind you ;)
|
| Put them on "backwards"; left cup on right ear and vice
| versa: forward facing mics now face backwards ;)
| gertlex wrote:
| It's a bit physically trickier than that due to curved
| tubing and ear molds... but I could totally "try" it with
| friends, e.g. rotating the BTE hearing aid 180 so it's
| forward, and they'd have fun too.
| gedy wrote:
| The Bose have 2 settings for this, 180 degrees frontal, and
| a much narrow directly in front of you.
| esperent wrote:
| My Sony's have a "focus on voice" setting in the noise
| cancelling section of their app. Is it similar?
| gedy wrote:
| I haven't tried those but sounds like possibly just adjusts
| frequencies vs using directional mics. Might be same as
| Airpods Pro which I should try.
| stubish wrote:
| 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.
| fragmede wrote:
| How much latency is acceptable? If you're off in the woods
| somewhere far from the cloud, sure, but it's less than 10ms
| to ping Google.com for me, and if the speech-to-text engine
| runs faster than realtime, I don't see why processing
| remotely is a problem. 10 ms is nothing.
|
| Still, the transcription part is already here today. The
| Google Translate app has a transcribe app that does this
| (runs locally; does not do magic AI "pick voice out from
| crowd"). My father-in-law has been using it for years. When
| I'm in a loud environment, the app I use on iOS is called
| Big, which just displays large text on the screen.
|
| https://apps.apple.com/us/app/make-it-big/id479282584
| RussianCow wrote:
| 10ms on a wifi connection is exceptional; on a cellular
| connection it's unheard of. I normally get 70-80ms on 5G,
| which is well past the threshold for realtime--and that's
| with a solid connection.
| withinboredom wrote:
| > If you're off in the woods somewhere far from the cloud,
| sure, but it's less than 10ms to ping Google.com for me
|
| I'm in one of the biggest cities of my current country, and
| the RTT to google from me is 87-91ms. Well over 4 million
| people live within 100km of me, so I suspect they see
| similar latencies. On my cell, I see 191-207ms.
| jeffhuys wrote:
| That's a shockingly high latency for a major city!
| Getting 3ms to google.com here, big city in the
| Netherlands. Probably close to a data center.
| withinboredom wrote:
| Also in a big city in the Netherlands, but I just blame
| ziggo. We're getting fiber in my neighborhood ... "soon"
| ... so we'll see how it is once that happens.
|
| Looks like a good 60ms is nothing but buffer-bloat in the
| router, as when pinging directly from the router, the RTT
| is much less.
| jiehong wrote:
| Latency or not, for privacy reasons.
| Terr_ wrote:
| > And we almost all will be where you are now, if we live
| long enough.
|
| And given the US healthcare system, somebody is gonna take
| all our money too, one way or another. :P
| giantg2 wrote:
| "But it really needs mobile devices capable of doing the
| processing locally"
|
| I would think this shouldn't be a problem as the correct
| hardware gets adopted in phones. As it stands now, you could
| probably run it on a Coral USB accelerator and battery run Pi
| (just an example of hardware, obviously we don't have the
| code).
| thfuran wrote:
| >and subtitle real world conversations for when hearing is
| worse or not there at all.
|
| Or for when you don't speak that language.
| camillomiller wrote:
| 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.
|
| >> https://www.cnet.com/health/medical/what-did-you-say-
| these-e...
| tacocataco wrote:
| You could even make a black list of people you don't want to
| hear!
| Narishma wrote:
| Like in that Black Mirror episode.
| qup wrote:
| Occasional bartender here. Okay!
| anonzzzies wrote:
| 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.
| snorremd wrote:
| In the same boat. I have some tinnitus (low frequency, radio
| static like noise) and struggle with conversation in loud
| places with lots of background noise and conversation. If I sit
| in a loud bar it is hopeless hearing what anyone but the
| closest two persons are saying. Conversation in normal settings
| are mostly no issue.
|
| So something that would enhance the speech of whomever I'm
| looking at would be super cool. Apple AirPods already have some
| sound shaping abilities to react to environment and mode. They
| also support specific voice enhancement if you put your phone
| down in front of the person speaking. If they ever support
| directional voice enhancement, like in this research, directly
| in the AirPods it would help me so much with social
| interactions in loud places.
| seydor wrote:
| I think someone made something similar in the 80s by using blind
| source separation techniques like ICA
|
| But this is very useful for people like me who don't hear well in
| the high frequencies.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocktail_party_effect
| grondilu wrote:
| This is what this post (or rather just the title, tbh)
| immediately reminded me of.
|
| I remember learning about it in the early 2000s. It was
| considered a very challenging problem, with very important
| applications, most notably speech recognition in natural
| settings.
|
| I wonder what is the current status on this. Is this considered
| solved nowadays?
| dboreham wrote:
| Presumably the tv ad would feature Gene Hackman. Edit: an AI
| simulation of Gene Hackman.
| a-dub wrote:
| cue 2024 gene hackman!
| Findecanor wrote:
| Is that a reference to the 1978 Superman movie?
| selimthegrim wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Conversation
| surfingdino wrote:
| How does it solve the problem of humans being able to detect that
| someone's looking at us? We tend to stop talking when we sense
| someone's staring at us.
| happyopossum wrote:
| That's just.... Weird. Conversation couldn't exist if we were
| like that, nor would any form of public address.
|
| The only behavior close to that I can think of is when someone
| is looking at someone expectantly, and trying to break in.
| tzs wrote:
| You don't need to stare at them. You only have to look at them
| for a moment to tell the system who you want to listen to. Then
| you can look away and it keeps listening to them.
|
| Actually from the description it sounds (no pun intended!) like
| you wouldn't even have to look at them. You just would need to
| be facing their direction. You could be looking at something
| else in the direction, like the ground in front of you.
|
| When you tell it to start listening to the person you are
| looking at what it really does is start listening to the person
| whose sound is coming from that direction, which it figures out
| from arrival times at both ears.
| thrawn0r wrote:
| This could easily hold a library of voices that you interact with
| (e.g at a bigger table of friends and family) and let you toggle
| in and out voices that are relevant. Apple please include this
| feature for your Airpods, thanks! :)
| p0w3n3d wrote:
| No need to stand close to the Big Brother's telescreen anymore
| risfriend wrote:
| This is stuff for spy movies.
| keploy wrote:
| 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.
| genewitch wrote:
| I have high octane AD[H]D and as my hearing "goes" so does my
| ability to listen to people with noise around. For at least 12
| years i've had to warn my wife and children if they're not
| facing me when they talk i can't hear them - but i was recently
| let in on the fact that other people consider them mumblers,
| so. I have a heard time hearing most people on the phone,
| especially call centers.
|
| Prior to what i would describe as idiotic practices in my 20s
| and 30s, i could focus rapt attention on as few or as many
| people as required in nearly any situation, parties, bars,
| whatever. Music venues obviously not, but looking at someone
| and talking loudly near their ear (vice versa) worked fine.
|
| My hearing issues are similar to my FIL's, who is 50% deaf in
| one ear and 95%+ in the other. if you're sittin on the wrong
| side, you're getting a lot of smiles and nods, because "eh?"
| gets old. real. fast. However, i can hear a raccoon messing
| around outside, and no one else seems to hear it; also a phone
| notification going off in the next room, as examples. my
| hearing "feels" fine, except in the very specific circumstance
| of human speech recognition. I also have tinnitus sometimes -
| it comes and goes, and if i concentrate i can focus it to the
| point of wincing, sometimes.
|
| interestingly i have to turn down the master volume of games
| when i am voice chatting. any amount of noise from the game
| will interfere with my ability to process people speaking,
| especially if the game has a lot of talking. Additionally, i
| cannot watch any tv or film produced after about 2000 or so
| without subtitles, regardless of how fancy the "5.1 surround"
| center channel DSP is.
|
| sorry for rambling, i suppose i don't think ADHD has anything
| to do with my hearing loss or issue; I should have worn hearing
| protection more when i was younger and i'm not regretting it
| much now, but when i can't hear music i enjoy i'll be pretty
| sad about that.
| follower wrote:
| > suppose i don't think ADHD has anything to do with my
| hearing loss or issue;
|
| I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss that as a potential factor,
| auditory processing issues are known to something that can be
| connected to ADHD in some people. (Also mentioned by a few
| other people in the comments.)
|
| Couple of links that go into more details:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_auditory_attention
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auditory_processing_disorder
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocktail_party_effect
|
| > Additionally, i cannot watch any tv or film produced after
| about 2000 or so without subtitles, regardless of how fancy
| the "5.1 surround" center channel DSP is.
|
| IMO that's potentially more because audio engineers for home
| movie releases are... ok, well, let's just say, "have
| different opinions on how to mix audio with dialogue than
| me". :) It's a _very_ common compliant.
|
| > I should have worn hearing protection more when i was
| younger
|
| Shouldn't we all? :) Still worth trying to protect what you
| have now--I've used the "Etymotic" brand ear plugs mentioned
| elsewhere in the comments which are intended to more evenly
| reduce sound levels without just "muffling" everything.
|
| > but when i can't hear music i enjoy i'll be pretty sad
| about that.
|
| Indeed. Understandably.
| stubish wrote:
| Curious what sort of processing power or chipsets the 'onboard
| embedded computer' needs. Could this be an iPhone app? Or is this
| going to require new, specialized hardware to commoditize?
| bernardlunn wrote:
| I am in the market but " The system is not commercially
| available". This is a perfect opportunity for Apple.
| cush wrote:
| Their paper is quoting an end-to-end latency of under 20ms... so
| impressive!
| muhammad-saalim wrote:
| Curious if it will also help to find a missing person in the
| crowd.
| amusingimpala75 wrote:
| 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.
| i5heu wrote:
| I think one could build quite the good system with 2
| directional microphones and then do some beamforming or how it
| is called to isolate the depth one want to perceive.
|
| But this is super expensive since you need calibrated mics etc.
|
| The biggest advantage of neural nets in this field is that you
| can use a dirt cheap microphone and postprocess it so good that
| it is good enough or even very good for humans.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| Depends on how you do it.
|
| If you have good eyetracking, a microphone array and decent
| object tracking on your AR glasses, then you don't really need
| much "AI" (ie you have access to https://facebookresearch.githu
| b.io/projectaria_tools/docs/AR...)
|
| but its not quite possible to do it all on device yet. However
| its not far off.
| INTPenis wrote:
| Directional mics were a toy 30 years ago, but an AI that can
| pick out a single voice and isolate it for you is quite the
| contemporary achievement.
| willis936 wrote:
| Yeah I'm not really sure what's going on here. Sonar has been
| using ML classifiers for decades but afaik stream splitting
| with 100% confidence is currently considered magic. So what
| did they apply or what advance did they make? Afaict they
| threw some audio into a GPT blender without a closer look at
| what's being done.
|
| Edit: I found the link to the paper. It isn't stream
| splitting so much as it is GPT-assisted beamforming
| estimation. Good stuff for sure.
|
| https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3642057
| meindnoch wrote:
| Microphone array beamforming:
| http://www.labbookpages.co.uk/audio/beamforming.html
| kleiba wrote:
| It's necessary for sales.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > but I don't know about the human voice identification.
|
| > The headphones send that signal to an on-board embedded
| computer, where the team's machine learning software learns the
| desired speaker's vocal patterns
|
| Their "AI" is good ol dumb machine learning
| gexla wrote:
| They couldn't use this to listen to me. They would just get "I am
| just a large language model, I can't help you with that."
|
| I use a lot of curse words. ;)
| hfjtifkenf wrote:
| 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.
| gexla wrote:
| Right, it wouldn't help you if you wanted to do something
| like "overhear" tips from attendees of a meth cooking
| convention.
| doktrin wrote:
| It probably should. The amount of ancillary and contextual
| information required to correctly distinguish between legal
| and illegal settings and application is invasively high.
| genewitch wrote:
| clbuttic AI nonsense
| vsnf wrote:
| YouTube's automatic captions do this for any word on an
| ambiguous blacklist. Not only is this annoying when reading
| the captions, but I imagine that for the hearing impaired, it
| would also be condescending to have Google tell you what you
| can and cannot read, especially since the hearing un-impaired
| experienced it just fine.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| And then there's TikTok who will downrank your content if
| its AI catches you using words like "kill" or "suicide"
| [1]... and so, as many creators cross-publish on YouTube
| Shorts as well, it also automatically degrades the content
| there as the creators use "euphemisms" instead. And then
| young people snag that up and literally write that way on
| Reddit.
|
| No thanks, I don't want to hear or read "unalived" again.
| And for fucks sake it's high time the US government steps
| in on Tiktok - when the CCP literally influences _how our
| children speak_ it 's gone way too far!
|
| [1] https://www.wired.com/story/algorithms-suicide-unalive/
| franga2000 wrote:
| The whole "unalive" thing started happening on US-based
| platforms even before TikTok existed, so blaming this on
| the CCP is either very ignorant or intentional
| misleading. Normal YouTube videos is where this started.
| Blame Google and their advertisers.
| theshackleford wrote:
| Most of this modern day nonsense comes from the US so
| maybe look inward first?
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| Interesting since in their model spec OpenAI [1] suggests
| that for translation they should basically let you do
| whatever.
|
| [1] https://cdn.openai.com/spec/model-
| spec-2024-05-08.html#excep...
|
| EDIT: I got a translation but it lectured me first (and I'm
| not convinced the translation is accurate) https://chatgpt.co
| m/share/10c63fad-4716-4cde-885d-a681c7cb78...
| criddell wrote:
| I asked Claude to help me learn to play a Pixies song on
| guitar and it would only give generic advice. Even when I
| asked for just the strumming pattern it refused due to
| copyright restrictions.
|
| I'm pretty sure a human guitar teacher would have not problem
| with helping me with that.
| silver_silver wrote:
| Questionable at best to consider copyright in this case but
| not when generating images.
| criddell wrote:
| Damn, that's a great point.
| xracy wrote:
| Feels like what AI _should_ be used for... "filtering out the
| noise" rather than creating it.
| eisbaw wrote:
| aka beam-forming. No AI needed, just good mics.
| tzs wrote:
| How would you track the target with beam-forming? If the target
| left the room and later returned how would you recognize this
| and resume tracking them?
| 72deluxe wrote:
| If you watch the second half of the video, it still picks up
| the person when they're not facing them (walking around a
| fountain), so it's only used to target the person for the
| initial capture.
| JSDevOps wrote:
| How is this AI? Not just some form of a parabolic microphone
| voidUpdate wrote:
| This is using a pair of any old commercial microphones that you
| can attach to your headphones, without looking like you're from
| the CIA and pointing a spy microphone at people
| tzs wrote:
| With a parabolic microphone you have to keep it aimed at the
| person you want to listen to. If they or you are moving (other
| than directly toward or away from each other) you will need to
| keep moving the microphone.
|
| With this you look at someone, signal that you want to keep
| listening to them, and the AI learns their voice. It then lets
| that voice through the noise cancelling system even as you or
| they move around the room or you look elsewhere.
| kleiba wrote:
| Ask the marketing team that, they'll explain.
| m463 wrote:
| get two of these for e2e communication (peer -> ear)
| i5heu wrote:
| 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
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWUHkCgslNE
| yosito wrote:
| This will appeal to eavesdroppers.
| andrewstuart2 wrote:
| 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.
| foreigner wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| I think this is the wildest "I guess I'm" old moment I've
| experienced... Do people wear headphones at parties?
| kortilla wrote:
| No?
| SllX wrote:
| Not unless it's a silent disco or you're the DJ.
| resolutebat wrote:
| People (well, teenagers) wil.wear headphones to the dinner
| table if you let them.
| balfirevic wrote:
| That makes much more sense than wearing them at the party.
| aqme28 wrote:
| I guess you're not old enough. This sounds like a feature for
| hearing aids.
| devjab wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Folks who are hearing impaired do. And that's increasingly
| more of us as we age.
| funki wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Being able to selectively mute people was an element in a
| couple of Black Mirror episodes.
| latexr wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Christmas_(Black_Mirror)
| nolok wrote:
| 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 200EUR I would
| probably buy one right now and maybe go to the movies again.
| spi wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| thfuran wrote:
| You can get earplugs with ~30 dB reduction and builtin in-
| ear monitors. Slap some microphones and such on the
| outside, and you can probably work with it.
| tech2 wrote:
| You could probably achieve the same outcome by combining
| two approaches though. Use traditional timing and phase
| management that existing noise cancelling headphones do.
| Then, using the data from that same set of microphones use
| AI to extract the conversation of interest (maybe using
| timing differences from left/right to determine who's "in
| front" of you) and inject that as the thing to overlay on
| top of the inversion. This way there's no risk of AI error
| on the noise cancellation and you can rely on existing
| solutions.
| spacebanana7 wrote:
| Even putting 50db of sound in the opposite direction might
| help take something from the volume of a nightclub to the
| volume of a refrigerator [1]. Not perfectly muting it, but
| perhaps good enough for many scenarios.
|
| Disclaimer - I also have no technical experience of sound
|
| [1] Going by the sounds levels in this post:
| https://lexiehearing.com/us/library/decibel-examples-
| noise-l...
| nickjj wrote:
| > I'm not in ML/AI/etc ... At all but my understanding is
| that none of that is actually impossible with current tech?
|
| Over 4 years ago nvidia released a feature that lets you
| remove arbitrary background noise in real-time.
|
| Here's a video where a guy put a fan, vacuum cleaner and leaf
| blower right next to his microphone:
| https://youtu.be/Q-mETIjcIV0?t=535
|
| It definitely chopped out a bunch of his natural frequency
| but it was clear enough to hear him without issues. Earlier
| in the video he did more normal tests like removing the sound
| of his keyboard in which case his voice's frequencies were
| mostly left untouched. He also banged a hammer on his desk
| while talking.
| genewitch wrote:
| i have an Asus microphone adapter which does this noise
| cancelling in the dongle. It was marketed as "AI" but i'm
| sure it's just fancy DSP in the ADC onboard. i use it with
| a $5 no-name clip on lav mic.
|
| I don't sound fantastic on it, but i sound better than
| people using cellphone microphones and thrift store
| microphones. It also works if i talk loudly from another
| room, but won't pick up normal volume conversations in the
| same room, which means there's a noise gate in there, too.
|
| I've heard a very abrasive sneeze sounds like "chew!", like
| a cartoon sneeze or something. I couldn't tell the
| difference in a blind test between a cellphone's noise
| cancelling with the sound recorder and the asus device vis
| a vis overall quality, but the gating on the asus is more
| aggressive. It also works better than the default discord
| noise reduction, but is about equal to the Krisp (iirc)
| implementation. Its gate is faster than discord if you have
| both krisp and the normal noise cancelling on.
|
| I think they're discontinued. If i ever see one in the wild
| i'll be sure and buy it. I have never tried it with a
| decent microphone - and i do have a couple, including shure
| and marantz - because there's no need. I wouldn't use it
| for podcasting or doing anything where the overall quality
| would be noticed; but for discord / in game / PC telephony
| it works great.
| foobiekr wrote:
| There's also a pretty useful criminal application of listening
| in on people without them knowing.
| planckscnst wrote:
| 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!
| yesbut wrote:
| This is not AI.
| kleiba wrote:
| Marketing begs to differ.
| algasami wrote:
| When ANC headphones came out, my friends thought about something
| like filtering certain sounds away. I bet many people have also
| had this kind of idea, but nevertheless, haven't actually built
| it. This looks intriguing, and with open-source POC code, it
| seems promising.
| __debugger__ wrote:
| 2nd gen AirPods Pro's Adaptive Noise Cancellation feature does
| exactly that.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| 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.
| wazoox wrote:
| The French youtuber Deus Ex silicium made a through analysis.
| Basically, hearing aids are slightly worse than ordinary
| wireless headphones, but 10 times more expensive.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPmwfbLPHG8
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| I doubt that is true. The hearing aids sold as medical
| devices, have to satisfy regulatory standards. So a lot of
| incentive to use older reliable tech.
|
| Not to mention, it probably takes a couple of years to get
| the certification for a device. So, any device to market is
| easily 2-3 years old tech by definition.
| eequah9L wrote:
| I think you meant "I don't doubt"? Because none of what you
| said sounds like a counterargument to what the parent said.
| datpiff wrote:
| > Not to mention, it probably takes a couple of years to
| get the certification for a device. So, any device to
| market is easily 2-3 years old tech by definition.
|
| Approval can be quicker for hearing aids as there are
| already works-alike devices on the market. 510(k) clearance
| takes less than 6 months.
| PoignardAzur wrote:
| From what the video says, it sounds like you could get a much
| better price by buying the devices directly from the
| constructor, even without the healthcare subsidies. But doing
| so means you need to calibrate them yourself.
|
| I wonder if some constructors could target this use-case by
| making aids that are very easy to self-calibrate.
|
| On the other hand, the median hearing aid user is pretty old,
| has lots of disposable money and has never watched a youtube
| tutorial in their life, so it might be a small market.
| rock_artist wrote:
| Yep. My grandma (may she rest in peace) had all those. I've
| actually thought of doing something like they did when she was
| alive and I've tried communicating with her at family events or
| in-public.
|
| I guess they're expensive because of relations with medical /
| health companies being complaint makes things expensive (eg.
| the same display but with certification to use in a medical
| facility would cost many times more).
| angra_mainyu wrote:
| I recall being a student in the biomedical
| electronics/biomedical devices lab and was curious about one
| piece of equipment that cost about ~10k EUR.
|
| The device is relatively simple to make so I asked my teacher
| why were they so expensive. He said that yeah, the
| engineering/manufacturing side of it is about 200 EUR, the
| remaining 9.8k EUR is spent on certifications/paperwork.
|
| Obviously, wages factor into this but over time I've come to
| see how paperwork and paying lawyers do in fact account for
| the majority of the cost.
| andrelaszlo wrote:
| Modern hearing aids are pretty cool. They've crammed in an
| amazing amount of features in a super tiny form factor, with a
| battery that lasts for a week even when using bluetooth.
|
| My Phonaks have the ability to automatically switch programs to
| some extent, and to fine tune the program using a companion
| app.
|
| I can function and even have conversations to some extent in
| noisy environments, something that would have been impossible
| for me with hearing aids from a decade or so ago. I'm very
| grateful for this of course.
|
| The pair costs roughly $2000. Luckily, it's covered by the
| national healthcare system[0] (which I of course pay for
| through my taxes) so I end up paying $50 every five years or
| so.
|
| I hope the advances in "AI" will make it possible to not just
| amplify and filter (even if it's in very clever ways) but to
| isolate and enhance/reconstruct voices in noisy environments.
|
| Meanwhile, I hope the trend of playing louder and louder music
| in cafes, restaurants and bars dies out. It's an accessibility
| nightmare, especially (but not only) for people with hearing
| loss.[1]
|
| 0: https://www.socialstyrelsen.se/en/about-us/healthcare-for-
| vi...
|
| 1: https://www.vox.com/2018/4/18/17168504/restaurants-noise-
| lev...
| KaiserPro wrote:
| Those do look good, and in the last 3 years the price has
| dropped significantly. in the uk those cost about $3k, so not
| much difference. alas, they are not covered by the health
| service, only lesser ones.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| > I hope the advances in "AI" will make it possible to not
| just amplify and filter (even if it's in very clever ways)
| but to isolate and enhance/reconstruct voices in noisy
| environments.
|
| I often see AI hopes expressed in this format. I would put it
| another way:
|
| > I hope the advances in "AI" will make it possible to
| restore hearing to baseline average human level
|
| Wishful thinking would be to enhance it beyond baseline. It's
| perfectly reasonable to think AI-advances can help
| researchers restore hearing in most cases, and reasonably
| within 10 years or so.
| consp wrote:
| > It's an accessibility nightmare, especially (but not only)
| for people with hearing loss.
|
| I can't make out any conversation in a noisy environment so
| usually switch to try-to-filter-noise-and-fail plus some
| amateur form of lip reading which works ok for a casual
| conversation but not for a more serious one. Hearing is "ok"
| enough though when testing, so no clue what it is.
|
| It helps a lot when the ambient noise level reduced by a few
| db and tuning down the music helps a lot.
| cjrp wrote:
| I'm exactly the same, end up doing a lot of nod-and-smile
| which isn't ideal! My hearing isn't great in the high
| frequencies, but nothing major.
| darkwater wrote:
| Same here. I have a (I think) very good ear in silent
| environments,for example I can hear a very faint sound at
| night, but I always struggled following conversations in
| music clubs or bar with high music volumes. I always end up
| nodding and saying "yeah yeah" even if I have no remote
| idea of what the other person is saying.
|
| Edit: but OTOH I see people having actual conversations in
| those same environments, so I guess it doesn't affect
| everyone in the same way, and it's not either something
| fully related to how my eardrums are capable of working...
| nkrisc wrote:
| My experience is exactly the same. I doubt _everyone_ is
| simply pretending they have any idea what everyone else
| is saying, so it must be something wrong with me.
|
| I've had my hearing tested. It's within normal ranges
| across all frequencies tested. I have to assume it's some
| kind of discrimination or processing difficulty in my
| brain.
|
| I've noticed the same effect can be triggered even in a
| white environment by only two or three people trying to
| talk to me at the same time. I can't understand anything
| any of them are saying and can't listen to just one.
| maeil wrote:
| I'm the same, and no, others are not pretending. It makes
| sense that our increased ability to recognize non-speech
| sounds may come at a cost of reduced ability to recognize
| speech.
| deadbunny wrote:
| Having worked (and frequented) loud bars and clubs for
| decades no one can hear anyone and just nods along.
| maeil wrote:
| Interesting, I'm the exact same, but so far hadn't come
| across anyone else with this issue.
|
| I think the two aspects might be related. Possibly the
| average brain is more finetuned to recognize speech
| specifically, which comes at the cost of recognizing
| other sounds, but improves speech recognition. Ours are
| less finetuned, with the opposite effect.
| wccrawford wrote:
| I also have a problem with "background noise" and being
| unable to understand what people are saying in noisy
| environments.
|
| Most people definitely do not have it as badly as I do,
| or they'd never go to a noisy bar and try to talk. It's
| simply impossible for me to do anything but pay _full_
| attention to the person talking, and even then I often
| have to guess many of the words.
|
| I even went and got my hearing checked (and my wife did
| at the same time), but the clerk assured me that we don't
| _definitely_ have hearing problems and joked that we
| needed marriage counseling instead. : / It's funny now,
| but I was a little pissed at the time.
|
| Anyhow, my point is that some of us do indeed "hear"
| worse in noisy environments, even if our ears are amazing
| when it's quiet.
| follower wrote:
| These have been mentioned elsewhere in the comments but
| in case it's helpful:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_auditory_attent
| ion
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auditory_processing_disor
| der
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocktail_party_effect
| yard2010 wrote:
| > On the way out, I tried to mention the tough acoustics to
| someone at the restaurant's front desk. I don't think he
| heard me.
|
| It's funny how for some problems the path to the solution is
| blocked by deadlock
| gravescale wrote:
| > Meanwhile, I hope the trend of playing louder and louder
| music in cafes, restaurants and bars dies out.
|
| I don't hold out much hope because as far as I can tell it's
| done to make everyone "shut up and drink". I could believe it
| adds at least 50% to sales because when you can't hear a word
| anyone says, all you can do is smile and nod and take a swig.
| And if the place is already full anyway, they don't care if
| you leave, you'll be replaced. What matters is whoever _is_
| in there taking up a space is drinking as fast as possible.
|
| Of course, people who get substantially drunk (which is to
| say, customers who spend) also don't care because they're not
| really listening closely or making conversational sense
| anyway and their pain tolerance is way up, so it's just a
| good time to them.
|
| Even more cynically, it also keeps the place "cool" because
| all the old, past-it fogeys like me don't even bother going
| in. From this sample of one, someone who thinks the music is
| too loud is un-hip, isn't adding to any hookup appeal (either
| not in the market or pushing the creepy end of the age range)
| and won't even spend much because they can't get really
| hammered because the hangover will take them out for two days
| and they can't afford to lose a weekend.
| HPsquared wrote:
| It's depressing to think of the different ways people are
| treated like livestock on a factory farm.
| 100721 wrote:
| It's depressing to think of the different ways livestock
| are treated like livestock on a factory farm, too.
|
| Factory farms are hell on earth.
| rayrey wrote:
| I need to find the article about the multistory pig farm
| in China. The whole lifecycle from piglet to fattening up
| and slaughter all in one convenient location.
| throwup238 wrote:
| At least livestock gets to grow up in pasture before
| they're sent to the feedlots.
| noSyncCloud wrote:
| This is, in fact, not always common. I guess it probably
| depends on the country/region to some extent.
| throwup238 wrote:
| I was thinking of cattle but totally forgot about pigs
| and chickens.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| Not all livestock is so lucky to have been born a cow.
| thsksbd wrote:
| Not just restaurants and bars. Artificial sounds is
| everywhere.
|
| There was a musician (fairly accomplished in his field) who
| woke up one day and started hating all music because he
| realized you cannot escape it. He wrote a book about it but
| I forget his name.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _Meanwhile, I hope the trend of playing louder and louder
| music in cafes, restaurants and bars dies out. It 's an
| accessibility nightmare, especially (but not only) for people
| with hearing loss._
|
| I thought it's well established that they're doing it
| entirely on purpose. Restaurants, cafes and bars don't make
| money on you chilling out and having a good time with
| friends; they make money on you buying food and drinks. They
| want you to order and consume ASAP until you're full and
| leave, freeing the table for the next group of customers.
| Loud music that prevents you from having conversations is how
| they make this happen.
| bowsamic wrote:
| I've been to quite empty restaurants doing the same thing
| though. The thing is, a lot of people seem to love it, even
| though they're struggling to talk to the people next to
| them. I don't understand it at all personally
| mhb wrote:
| This explanation doesn't really work for the cafes that
| allow people to take up space at tables for long periods
| just guilt-ordering a minimal amount.
| gertlex wrote:
| Curious, is that your first pair of phonaks? If not, is the
| use use of bluetooth + app hurting your soul?
|
| My current pair are about 6 years old, working fine still,
| thankfully... But in a recent visit to audiologist, they had
| me test out a newer pair... but they had a single button
| instead of rocker + button, and bluetooth/app was touted.
|
| I dread the touchscreen phase of HA as a young person with
| functional fingers (vs elders with dexterity issues) and a
| preference for physical buttons (a la my 2009 car).
|
| The idea of autoswitching the programs outside limited cases
| (direct audio input cables and increasingly-rare telecoil
| situations are the only things I would accept) also doesn't
| sound great! :)
| andrelaszlo wrote:
| Second, but first with BT.
|
| Connecting to the app takes forever and frequently fails.
| It seems to clash with the Android device pairing somehow.
| It's not great. The only workaround I've found (if
| restarting the things by opening/closing the battery
| compartment doesn't work) is to remove the pairing and set
| them up again.
|
| I also would prefer to set up the programs once and then
| switch them with physical buttons. I had my audiologist do
| something like that with my old pair. New audiologist now
| that doesn't seem as flexible, or maybe it's not possible.
|
| The bad app experience is honestly a reason for me to look
| at other brands for my next pair.
|
| I'd like to think that a bit of a learning curve is okay
| for something that's basically an extension of your body,
| but everything seems to be getting stevejobsified these
| days. (I'll be driving my 2006 Saab until my mechanic
| either retires or runs out of spare parts!)
| follower wrote:
| > I also would prefer to set up the programs once and
| then switch them with physical buttons. [...] The bad app
| experience is honestly a reason for me to look at other
| brands for my next pair.
|
| While the latter is _probably_ the preferred approach for
| dealing with the issue, I 'll admit _my_ mind first went
| to:
|
| If you've got time for a side-project maybe consider
| reverse engineering the Android app's Bluetooth
| support... and, you know, "just" re-implement the same
| thing in some stand alone hardware. :)
|
| There may even already _be_ a project related to your
| device--I 'm aware of multiple health/medical-tech/device
| related reverse engineering projects that were primarily
| driven people with programming/hardware experience
| wanting to avoid crappy vendor apps & have control of
| very personally relevant devices.
| boringg wrote:
| Id say the hearing aids are impressive tech but also not as
| good as I would have thought them to be. My mother uses
| phonaks and they constantly give feedback or are scratchy
| sounds and has to go get the audiologist to adjust them.
|
| Shes older so that might be part of the technical challenge
| with them but i would have expected better given the huge
| price tag. Feels a bit like a monopoly running the
| development but that is merely a hunch.
| lathiat wrote:
| Apple AirPods Pro are doing all of this now. They'll isolate
| people in front of you, can reject background noise but allow
| voice, etc. They can also correct both music audio and
| "transparency" audio using your Audiogram. Unfortunately for
| me, they average both ears and perform the same correction on
| both ears and I have notable hearing loss only on one side.
|
| I don't see any reason proper hearing aids can't already be
| doing it now though I am sure some of them are but probably
| the even more ridiculously priced $8k+ models.
|
| Nuheara is also in this space but marketed and designed more
| specifically to be a low budget hearing aid replacement. With
| a similar pride to AirPods Pro.
| singingfish wrote:
| The only advice on hearing aids is if you need them, get it
| diagnosed and intervened early. That way you get the cheapest
| and most reliable hearing aid that's going to work well for
| you.
|
| Otherwise the stuff you described in your comment around
| attention filtering starts to happen because of the sensory
| loss. Therefore the longer you avoid hearing correction once
| your hearing starts to become impaired, the more complex and
| expensive a hearing aid you need to re-do. This is because
| these expensive hearing aids do a poor approximation of the
| things your brain/auditory cortex was doing prior to the
| sensory loss.
|
| BRB - better go book a hearing test.
| moffkalast wrote:
| > you tend to loose the ability to "steer" your hearing
|
| Do people genuinely have that ability, to listen to a specific
| person and ignore the rest?
|
| Asking because no matter how hard I try I can never understand
| a fucking thing if there's many people talking loudly in the
| background, it all mixes together into an incoherent whole.
| andrelaszlo wrote:
| "Selective auditory attention is a normal sensory process of
| the brain, and there can be abnormalities related to this
| process in people with sensory processing disorders such as
| autism, attention deficit hyperactive disorder,[30] post
| traumatic stress disorder,[31] schizophrenia,[30] selective
| mutism,[32] and in stand-alone auditory processing
| disorders.[33]"
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_auditory_attention
| moffkalast wrote:
| Ah interesting, I must have dis or that order then.
| nolongerthere wrote:
| Yup I have mild ADHD and as the day wears on I find it
| harder to do this subconsciously. I need to start making
| a conscious effort to focus only on the person I'm
| speaking with and not the cross conversation happening at
| the same table.
| glandium wrote:
| I can sometimes do that with instruments in music. Never for
| people.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| > Do people genuinely have that ability
|
| Indeed! however like visual depth perception, not everyone
| has it. The human ear has a load of bits that allow removing
| noise from the signal. (I don't have a block diagram, sorry!)
|
| In theory one should be able to locate a noise in 3D. You can
| test this by getting someone to hide your phone and then ring
| it. if you have 3d sound perception you should be able to
| work out if the phone is behind/front/up/down.That forms part
| of the "steering" ability.
|
| Then there is filtering the noises that you don't want. Music
| is can be a good test for this, how many instruments played
| on this track, what instruments were they, what were the
| lyrics, etc. Being able to do this requires that you be able
| to filter out noises that you don't like.
|
| Again like all human senses, there are levels of ability, and
| in some cases can be improved with "exercise"
|
| But, hearing what people are saying against a loud background
| is really really hard, so don't worry too much. Plus voices
| have specific human social encoding, so they can be affected
| disproportionally
| Lio wrote:
| Looking at Apple's Airpods Pro, they're starting to get some of
| the features of hearing aids. E.g. features to allow doorbells
| through the noise cancelling.
|
| I don't think anyone would suggest them as a realistic choice
| today but I could see Apple going after that market and where
| Apple goes others follow.
|
| Much like the market for prescription reading glasses has been
| eroded by off the self glasses.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> they are deeply expensive_
|
| Like, $50,000. I'm hoping that removing the need for
| prescription ones, will allow the price to go down
| significantly.
|
| As an older person, I have noticed that my hearing has gotten
| "louder," over the years.
|
| I still hear dB levels fine. The problem is that I hear _all_
| the noise. I used to be able to hold conversations in loud
| environments (like bar /restaurants), being able to hear the
| other person, despite the background noise.
|
| Not that long ago, I was at dinner in a noisy restaurant. I was
| sitting directly across a narrow table from someone (about 30
| inches -max).
|
| I couldn't hear a word they said. They could hear me fine (they
| were younger).
|
| If this works out, it might give the folks currently collecting
| $50K a pop, another way to charge eye-watering money.
| criddell wrote:
| What kind of hearing aids cost $50k?
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I suspect many of them.
|
| I was shocked, when I found out.
|
| Of course, you aren't just paying for the hardware. You are
| also paying for all the medical stuff surrounding the kit.
|
| You can understand why vested interests fought so hard to
| prevent making hearing aids OTC.
|
| Like I said, I suspect that gravy train may have derailed.
| newaccount74 wrote:
| They don't cost 50k. They cost at least an order of
| magnitude less.
|
| My moms hearing aids cost 3000EUR. They support bluetooth
| so she can use them with her iPhone. The price includes
| hearing tests, getting molds of the hearing canal, all
| the setup and configuration performed by skilled
| technicians.
|
| Sure they are expensive, but there really isn't much of
| an opportunity for disruption. Customized hardware is
| expensive, there's no way around that.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I live in the US.
|
| I noticed that someone else posted a comment, saying that
| Americans exaggerate medical costs.
|
| We don't.
|
| Our doctors drive Bentleys.
|
| I'm really glad that they have broken the monopoly. Maybe
| some politicians retrieved their souls.
|
| It's absolutely _insane_ how expensive healthcare is in
| the US.
|
| But THANK GOD we don't have socialism! /s
| fn-mote wrote:
| > I noticed that someone else posted a comment, saying
| that Americans exaggerate medical costs.
|
| In this case, I agree that your earlier post exaggerates
| the cost of hearing aids in the US.
|
| For example, [1] quotes a top price of $3500/ear. That
| makes $7000 total. A page full of search results [2] will
| tell you that prices are in ranges like $1-6k each. Even
| the hearing aid producers are quoting those prices. [3]
|
| [1] https://www.hearinglife.com/hearing-aids/prices
|
| [2] https://www.google.com/search?q=united+states+hearing
| +aid+pr...
|
| [3] https://www.miracle-ear.com/hearing-aids/cost
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| OK. I cede the point. It's likely I'm wrong, as I am not
| deaf, and don't have a hearing aid, so I am not speaking
| from experience. I have a freind that is deaf, and has
| the magnetic cochlear ones.
|
| It's not worth arguing about. This is not an area I'm
| anywhere near expert in, as I suspect, many other
| commenters are.
| citizen_friend wrote:
| This is a low quality comment, that was already debunked
| by a google search in a comment below.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| What Google search?
|
| You mean the specific hearing aid searches?
|
| It was a general comment on the state of health care in
| the US (not just hearing aids).
|
| Before the new legislation, we couldn't just go to the
| corner drug store, and buy a hearing aid off the shelf.
| It needed to come as part of a package, including many
| tests and appointments with ENT folks.
|
| But I cede the point. It was a low-quality comment that
| is likely to trigger folks with certain political views,
| and I apologize. Won't happen again.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I feel like you are still exaggerating the difficulty.
|
| Costco has sold them for at least 10 years. You just need
| to make an appointment and they take care of the rest.
| gertlex wrote:
| Maybe you're thinking about the costs of getting a
| cochlear implant?
|
| Having worn hearing aids for 3 decades (in the US), and
| not going cheap, the high end name-brand ones have always
| been about 4-6k for a pair. (and most of the time growing
| up, health insurance didn't cover it)
|
| From everything I've ever seen or in any conversation
| online, 50k is either a misremembered or made up number
| for BTE or in-the-canal hearing aids.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| You are correct. I have a profoundly deaf friend with
| cochlear aids.
|
| They are a _lot_ more expensive.
|
| Thanks so much for the comment.
| gertlex wrote:
| Glad to help! At my recent audiologist appointment, it
| escalated to being suggested that I go for a cochlear
| implant consultation for one of my ears (I figured why
| not, despite not personally thinking this was something
| I'd do any time soon). Apparently it's actually quite
| possibly mostly covered by my health insurance due to
| showing medical necessity...
|
| I'm fortunate that I could reasonably plan to pay for it
| myself... the bigger hold-up/concern/issue has been the
| drastic change in "how I hear" that it would involve.
| (experiences are widely variable it sounds like, but
| loosely about a year for the brain to gradually learn and
| improve how it uses the new input?)
|
| I haven't even opened the manufacturers' books given to
| me, or done more research on the possibility since that
| appointment though...
| Dma54rhs wrote:
| They are not anywhere at that price. The ones europeans tend
| to get go for $1,806 retail I checked.
|
| I've noticed Americans like to bs their medical costs as bad
| as the system is, you can't compare some newest luxury
| devices to what an average person is using all around the
| world.
| m-s-y wrote:
| In fairness to op, the out of date pricing may not be that
| out of date.
|
| recent legislation in the US was meant to bring down
| hearing aid cost and to break the monopoly on devices. It's
| seemingly worked so well that TV commercials for individual
| brands have started to show up for low cost aids (sub-$5k)
| wl wrote:
| Hearing aids (ignoring implantable ones like BAHA and
| cochlear) weren't going for anywhere near $50,000 in the
| US.
| josefresco wrote:
| My dad just got hearing aids (US) about 3 weeks ago. They
| cost him $1600 with no insurance coverage.
| vidarh wrote:
| That's utterly insane, and I suspect probably some outlier
| particularly expensive ones. You can book a fitting, and buy
| a choice of hearing aids, get trained, follow up, and 5 years
| worth of checks ups and appointments in London privately with
| no insurance ranging from ca $1300 to $5000. I've not even
| found any higher than $5k when I searched for prices in
| London, though I'm sure some of the Harley Street clinics
| will be willing to overcharge at ridiculous rates too.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| You are correct. I was thinking of cochlear aids.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Just to be clear.
|
| Looks like I'm wrong, making a general statement, based on
| anecdotal information.
|
| We'll have to see what the future holds for us.
| eek2121 wrote:
| I don't have hearing aids, but I do suffer from hearing loss.
| That being said, the Apple Airpods do a wonderful job of
| helping with that in the adaptive or transparency modes.
|
| Apple was working taking the platform even further at one point
| and I would not be surprised if we see some new announcements
| eventually.
|
| Imagine if a $200 set of airpod pros outperformed top hearing
| aids.
| eek2121 wrote:
| Link to an article about it: https://www.techradar.com/how-
| to/how-to-use-your-apple-airpo...
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| I too suspect they're looking into it beyond existing
| prevention features, they've had some opt-in studies for
| airpods:
|
| https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2024/05/apple-hearing-
| study-s...
| passwordoops wrote:
| The expense isn't a tech problem, but an anti trust problem. A
| small cartel controls the supply, so the only incentive is to
| maximize profits, not out compete with better tech (0)
|
| (0) https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/silencing-the-
| competition...
| bongodongobob wrote:
| Yup, in the US this was because they were classified as
| medical devices which made barrier to entry extremely high.
| However, the laws regulating this got looser over the last
| year so we will be seeing more competition now that they can
| be sold OTC.
| thsksbd wrote:
| Instead of fancy shmancy AI, could a pupil tracker on
| eyeglasses be used to estimate where a person wants to hear and
| use phasing to amplify the signal from there?
|
| You have two microphones already, spaced about 30 cm apart...
| gertlex wrote:
| Microphones are cheap right? Just have multiple on each ear
| while you're squeezing in the AI features too :)
| KaiserPro wrote:
| Yup thats basically what most AR glasses are capable of (or
| in the case of the linked aria glasses, research device that
| does have all the sensors.)
|
| but you don't need eye tracking all the time, as most you can
| latch on to the location of the speaker without looking at
| them continuously.
|
| The possibilities are rather good, but it needs someone
| willing to fund the research
| randlet wrote:
| "One thing that the HN crowd should appreciate is just how
| expensive and shit hearing aids are."
|
| Expensive, yes. My hearing aids cost ~$2500CAD each but "how
| shit hearing aids are" is not my experience at all. My hearing
| aids (Widex) are awesome! The quality of audio in normal
| situations is fantastic. My only real complaint is that they're
| not completely waterproof so I have to plan ahead a bit if I'm
| going to be outdoors in the rain.
| OkGoDoIt wrote:
| Are those project aria glasses actually available for purchase?
| You say cheap, that implies there's a price somewhere. Looks
| like an internal experiment. I would love to be able to buy
| something like this, but all of the commercially available
| wearable computers are pretty crappy in my experience.
| tromp wrote:
| > To use the system, a person wearing off-the-shelf headphones
| fitted with microphones taps a button while directing their head
| at someone talking. The sound waves from that speaker's voice
| then should reach the microphones on both sides of the headset
| simultaneously; there's a 16-degree margin of error.
|
| Perhaps the accuracy of identifying the correct voice could be
| vastly increased by adding video input. The AI can then try to
| match the various voices with the lip movements in the center of
| the video, basically lip reading.
| albert_e wrote:
| I love this.
|
| I know this is just the beginning and the tech and UX will mature
| a lot - but being able to consciously choose what we allow into
| our sensory world would be a great superpower to have.
|
| In the distant future this will all be embedded inside a cochlear
| (neural?) implant.
|
| You can "save" known voices, prioritize them, identify various
| scenes/modes automatically like
| meetings/parties/concerts/driving/walking etc, know when to allow
| external sounds in (alarms, honks, someone calling your
| attention, etc)
|
| And with great power yada yada.
|
| I can already imagine a few ways this can be misused / abused /
| create non-existent challenges and problems too. But I am
| (cautiously) optimistic that we as human race will collectively
| figure out how to steer these new technology applications into
| net positive territory.
|
| 2040: iAudio and xSmell blamed for people losing connect with
| nature's sounds (like bird chirps and flowing streams) and smells
| (petrichor) - things that inspire us, make us creative, make life
| worthwile, and make us humans.
| fergie wrote:
| This is an actual thing that could work: AI's ability to "stem"
| voices and instruments is really impressive.
| Ibreezy wrote:
| Ok
| briansm wrote:
| Bit annoying that they added ambient music over the demo youtube
| video, spoiling the one thing you want to demonstrate.
| genewitch wrote:
| this is incessant and annoying, i like watching mechanics
| complain about cars, but most of them put a music bed or
| whatever behind their speech and will ask "you hear that?"
|
| no, i don't, because of your kenny G knockoff playing at low
| volume.
| Wildgoose wrote:
| My daughter has an auditory impairment which she describes as
| "brain deaf".
|
| Basically, her hearing is perfect but her brain struggles to
| process sound in a noisy environment; she can't single out what
| she is listening to.
|
| This sounds perfect for her!
| geros wrote:
| An audiologist described this to me as having an "audio
| processing disorder". Hope this helps.
| follower wrote:
| Mentioned elsewhere in the comments but in case it's helpful:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_auditory_attention
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auditory_processing_disorder
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocktail_party_effect
| bdw5204 wrote:
| In my experience, most people don't seem to understand the
| concept of noise cancelling headphones and will still try to talk
| to people who clearly can't hear them. I can't imagine it'd be
| any different for these AI headphones in practical use. Probably
| worse because the person you're actually trying to talk to might
| think you can't hear them.
| hkwerf wrote:
| Maybe it's the opposite? ANC headphones are lacking a means of
| communicating to people that you're not hearing them. However,
| if your ANC headphones link you looking at someone with
| unmuting them, that communication barrier is crossed. This is
| particularly nice, as looking at someone is commonly a signal
| for "I'm listening to you".
| brap wrote:
| I don't technically have a hearing problem, sometimes when
| there's a lot of noises occurring at the same time I hear it as
| one jumble.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I think technically that is considered a hearing problem if
| you're unable to separate out voices. I forget the name of it
| though. But this can actually disqualify you from certain types
| of jobs, such as the police and military.
| serial_dev wrote:
| 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").
| nolongerthere wrote:
| > _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.
| abcdefg_ wrote:
| So I'm not alone. I'm in my mid-forties and have experienced
| a significant decline over the last few years. Now I can
| rarely distinguish one voice in moderate background noise
| (conversations, music) without leaning towards them, cupping
| my ears. Sometimes I just have to give up and try to nod or
| smile at the right time as the conversation goes on around
| me.
|
| I recently had a test at an ENT doctor who told me my hearing
| is fine and insinuated I was wasting his time. The test was
| listening to high-pitched beeps over white noise, which isn't
| representative of the problem. Distinguishing one particular
| tone over several similar ones would be more like it.
| glenngillen wrote:
| Hey, there's _dozens_ of us! :P
|
| I wrote about my experience with this last year:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35897515
|
| I did exactly the type of diagnosis you're talking about.
| It was quite good at how it simulated a noisy environment
| with a bunch of background chatter and then a single voice
| you were meant to listen to that would repeat various
| patterns of words with various combinations of lower
| speaking volume and/or higher background noise.
|
| One thing I wish I'd made a point of at the time was the
| fact that, despite being an apparently soundproof booth
| with headphones on, I could definitely hear people talking
| in the waiting room and another audiologist in an adjacent
| room. Though I'm not sure it would have materially changed
| their lack of diagnosis (they'd already detected I could
| hear into negative decibels).
|
| I still don't have a diagnosis, but I'm increasingly coming
| around to the idea that maybe it's not that my hearing is
| bad but that I actually hear _too much_. What I 'd
| previously thought was my unability to hear people speaking
| on the radio in the car when everyone else clearly could
| wasn't because I couldn't hear the radio, it's that I can't
| hear it over the top of all the tyre and wind noise I'm
| also hearing and trying to process out. I don't think the
| other passengers in the car hear the rest of the noise,
| they only hear the radio.
|
| I bought various types of Loop earplugs and have found them
| fantastic for live music events. I can now hear my friends
| when they're talking to me! Unfortunately they greatly
| amplify my perception of the volume of my own voice when I
| talk which has the undesirable side-effect of making me
| talk even quieter so I feel like I'm having to yell when I
| want to talk to people. I've also not found them as useful
| as I'd hoped in restaurant-type settings.
| boringg wrote:
| Same thing. Did a test and the audiologists comment was
| that I would be the best hearing tested all day or all
| month and come back in twenty years.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| 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...
| totetsu wrote:
| There are these passive directional earplugs
| https://www.flareaudio.com/pages/earhd
| j1elo wrote:
| The prospect of an earplug that eases focusing audio got me
| interested... but no thanks, I won't go out to socialize with
| basically two mini trumpets coming out of my ears. It looks
| funny, reminiscing of classic b&w pictures with deaf people
| carrying ear trumpets everywhere with them during 18th
| century.
| cs02rm0 wrote:
| Yeah, I like the concept, not a fan of the implementation.
| SamBam wrote:
| I was agreeing with you, but then I watched the video of
| Stephen Fry and I felt that they just looked like beats
| earbuds, which people have normalized wearing.
| instagib wrote:
| I responded to another comment but after reading this thread
| noticed my hearing aids have a custom directional hearing
| section I can modify.
| superultra wrote:
| 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.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I've got a similar thing; I can't pull most song lyrics out
| of the song, and any significant amount of background noise
| means lip reading for me. Hearing's all fine, it's the
| processing that doesn't work quite right.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auditory_processing_disorder
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| Ditto here. An audiologist recommended something called
| LACE therapy, but it wasn't cheap so at the time I didn't
| go for it - I need to look into it, and see if it's a
| legitimate treatment for this, or snake-oil.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| I would not say it's snake oil, but it will only help if
| you've learned some helplessness or are bad at thinking
| about what someone is saying while they are speaking. A
| hearing aid or filter is always going to be more helpful
| if you only can pick one treatment.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| But that's the thing, I'm in the similar position to
| others in the chain - last week, an audiologist said my
| hearing was tremendously good. But if there's noise
| around me, I cannot process what people are saying.
|
| I'm not sure what you mean by "only if you've learned
| some helplessness." I'm not a _complete_ idiot, I can
| generally guess what someone is saying based on context,
| but if I 'm having a conversation with Group A in a loud
| environment, and someone from group B turns to me and
| says something, I don't have much context as to what
| they're saying.
|
| (Also, a PSA: if someone who didn't hear you says,
| "what", or "can you say that again?", don't just repeat
| the last three words you said. Please repeat the entire
| sentence. I know that _usually_ , the last few words
| provide enough context to reconstruct the sentence, but
| if you just tell me "this Sunday?" it's usually not
| enough, you have to just say, "Are you still planning on
| reconfiguring the encambulator this Sunday?")
| simmons wrote:
| > if someone who didn't hear you says, "what", or "can
| you say that again?", don't just repeat the last three
| words you said.
|
| My pet peeve about asking people to repeat isn't that
| they won't repeat enough, but that they'll repeat in
| exact the same volume and enunciation as they originally
| spoke. I'm not sure why they expect to do the same thing
| again and get different results. The only thing that I've
| found that works is to tell them what it sounds like they
| said, no matter how crazy ("Did you say, 'the elephant is
| painting the room'?") and only then will they speak loud
| and clear. (Which I'm sure is annoying for the other
| person, but what else am I to do?)
| jwagenet wrote:
| The parent poster's word choice was perhaps uncharitable,
| but my read is helplessness is not equitable to idiocy.
| To me, it's more the difference between actively trying
| to understand the conversation vs letting it tune out as
| a default.
|
| I find that I have trouble focusing on one conversation
| if others are happening around me, but that has much to
| do with where my focus lies as my brain being
| overwhelmed.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| It didn't occur to me that it was an insulting term.
| Sorry about that.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| Two real examples I knew: someone who started
| interrupting people mid-sentence to get clarification,
| and someone whose mind started going blank when other
| people were talking.
|
| Behavioral training like LACE can be helpful for people
| who started doing things like that to cope with a hearing
| problem, but an audiologist should be looking at a filter
| (with APD you can be prescribed a filter for one ear even
| if you have no hearing loss, depending on your
| diagnosis.)
|
| Neither case had anything to do with intelligence as
| demonstrated in every area of their life outside of
| hearing processing.
|
| I and these others have auditory processing disorder as
| well.
| nosecreek wrote:
| Interesting. I suspect I may have the same thing.
|
| I also have poor vision without glasses, and I've always
| found that when I go swimming (and can't wear my glasses)
| my hearing also gets significantly worse. Or at least the
| cocktail party problem gets worse, as my brain seems to get
| overwhelmed by every single background noise. I think some
| of this is explained by many indoor pools being big echoey
| spaces, but it still happens at outdoor pools as well. I
| suspect that when one sense (sight) is degraded, my brain
| tries to compensate by focusing on another sense (hearing),
| and the end result is even worse due to APD.
| dekhn wrote:
| This is why I turn on closed captioning even when I'm
| watching alone with headphones on.
| vidarh wrote:
| I resorted to wearing earplugs for several years when I was
| going out more. I felt it did very little to reduce my
| ability to hear conversations, and it made the whole
| experience overall so much more pleasant.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| If the SNR is already low enough that you're having issues
| discerning speech, lowering the volume won't help.
| cs02rm0 wrote:
| It won't help you discern speech, but it'll stop your
| ears ringing.
| pc86 wrote:
| Except it absolutely will help you discern speech. The
| sound blocking is not uniform across all frequencies and
| most speech is not blocked very well. So earplugs will
| make speech 20% quieter but will also make all the
| nonsense going on around you 70% quieter. So the speech
| will be easier to hear assuming you don't have $3 Wish
| earplugs.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| Lowering the volume can help with the SNR, because
| neither the signal, the noise, nor the lowering effect
| caused by earplugs are consistent with respect to
| frequency. Highly objectionable, harsh 4-8 kHz noise that
| might echo around a concrete and steel venue is blocked
| well by good earplugs, while low-frequency 100-400 Hz
| speech is ineffectively blocked.
| kk6mrp wrote:
| Do you have a good earplug recommendation?
| swader999 wrote:
| I like these best for low cost plugs. Howard Leight LL-1
| Laser LiteUncorded Foam Earplugs Box, 200 Pair
| https://a.co/d/3REDT7l
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| Ha! I bought the same box literally a month ago, this
| listing ships Prime and costs a little less:
| https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0007XJOLG
|
| Those are great for the workshop, but they're flourescent
| green and pink. That makes it easy to see when someone's
| wearing them, which is good in a shop but usually bad in
| social settings.
| swader999 wrote:
| You could apply makeup to them. I mainly use them for
| sleep or in office when I want to focus so the colour
| helps in the office.
| tripzilch wrote:
| I have some of these https://www.loopearplugs.com/
|
| They're super comfortable and they don't look weird like
| the neon yellow foam ones :) Before I always disliked
| wearing earplugs when I have to at concerts, but the ones
| from Loop I just wear anywhere I like that is too loud
| Spoom wrote:
| Loops are great as a sibling comment mentioned but I had
| to have very loud dehumidifiers in my house all weekend;
| I've been walking around with my Sennheiser Momentum True
| Wireless 3s in transparency mode (i.e. uses microphones
| to play sound from the outside into the headphone), and
| it's been amazing. It cut the audio to a maximum level
| and let me discern conversations more easily than folks
| not wearing anything.
| jefurii wrote:
| I like Etymotic (https://www.etymotic.com). The design
| lowers the decibels without affecting the sound too much.
| I used to play in a band with a drummer who always wore
| their high-end plugs which you have to have molded to
| your ear canals, but they also make cheaper standardized
| ones that do a good job.
| bigfudge wrote:
| The cheap etymotic plugs are great value. I always have a
| pair on my keyring. The advantage over foam plugs is that
| the attenuation is more linear so you don't feel so weird
| wearing them.
| rangestransform wrote:
| I go to live music a lot so I invested in some custom
| molded earplugs from 1of1custom.com
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| That's not entirely true, if you're selectively lowering
| the volume of different frequencies it might solve the
| problem. The only problem with that is that earplugs tend
| to reduce high frequencies more than low frequencies, but
| background noise is mostly low frequencies. Earplugs
| might help you hear people in a machine shop with a lot
| of high frequency noises though.
| vidarh wrote:
| It didn't help much with the signal, but it also didn't
| make it worse, and it made the overall experience far
| more pleasant.
| cqqxo4zV46cp wrote:
| Ha. Classic techie parachuting in and incorrectly
| intuiting how something works. Show me earplugs that
| REDUCE equally across all frequencies and I'll invest
| every dollar I have to my name.
| eks391 wrote:
| > Show me earplugs that REDUCE equally across all
| frequencies and I'll invest every dollar I have to my
| name.
|
| It has been a long time since I worked tangentially with
| frequencies, but IIRC it physically isn't possible to
| block/dampen _all_ frequencies of sound. Although due to
| different physical phenomena, this is why everything has
| a color and nothing is truly black - it is impossible for
| a material to suck in _every_ wavelength of light.
| burntwater wrote:
| For decades now, when I enter a bar or restaurant I turn
| down the volume of my hearing aid. Not because everything
| is too loud, but because it allows me to hear spoken
| speech much better. It doesn't work quite as well on
| modern digital hearing aids as it did on older analog,
| and I don't fully understand the mechanics of it, but
| it's what I do.
| UI_at_80x24 wrote:
| I've done this too and it helps tremendously.
| mozman wrote:
| I don't go to bars very often anymore but I absolutely detest
| live music. I go with friends to talk. Not to have loud music
| prevent a conversation.
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| Ironically, I think most of my hearing loss is from people
| trying to talk to me while I was listening to a band.
|
| If the band is playing zip it!
| Aeolun wrote:
| Dunno whether you really need more than your hands to
| communicate when listening to a band in that situation.
| At least until you get to more than 10 people that need a
| beer.
| wanderingstan wrote:
| > ...restaurant and public space designers have stopped
| thinking about sound.
|
| Theory: The bars and restaurants want young patrons, so the
| poor acoustics are a selection mechanism. Only young people
| can converse there, so older folks stay away. The place gets
| reputation as "young and hip."
|
| Whether by conscious design or "natural selection" for
| establishments, this seems to be the case.
| RhysU wrote:
| Designers for bars and clubs will take the clientele into
| account in subtle sensory ways. One once told me how he
| designed a club known to cater to those having trysts-- it
| had many isolated booths where the lighting prevented
| seeing into the booths from the main areas.
| kdfjgbdfkjgb wrote:
| the club was already known for that before it was
| designed?
| nomat wrote:
| have seen this at many house parties. The young people
| gravitate towards the noise while the older ones clump up
| around the periphery
| RobotToaster wrote:
| Auditory processing disorder?
| floatrock wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Recently listened to a really good podcast about this
| phenomenon https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/gastropod/id
| 918896288?... (or pick your favorite podcast app)
|
| Couple takeaways I remember:
|
| - "Silence is the new luxury" -- restaurants can have good
| sound design, but it doesn't come cheap. Upscale restaurants
| are starting to differentiate themselves with sound design
|
| - The modern clean aesthetic (glass, concrete, stainless
| steel, minimalism) promotes loud, echo'ey spaces
|
| - "You're not having a good time unless your ears are
| ringing" was an intentional design choice popularized by some
| restaurant guru in the 90's. Growing awareness of the
| problems is starting to create a backlash
|
| - Loud restaurants are damaging for the waitstaff's health.
| You can work for hours in an environment so loud that OSHA
| would demand hearing protection.
|
| - The luxury sound design studios can be so good at isolating
| ambient noise that they also sell an "anti-noise-cancelling"
| sound system that actually selectively re-amplifies crowd
| noise for when you do want to tune up some sense of busy-ness
| (with too much sound dampening in an unfilled room, it starts
| to feel too isolated... being "out and about" is some of the
| reason people go out dining)
| countvonbalzac wrote:
| Aren't there some cheap ways to muffle sound?
|
| Wood floors, rugs, curtains, artwork, acoustic panels, etc.
| abeisgreat wrote:
| There definitely are but, perhaps by definition, items
| soft enough to dampen sound are often easily damaged so
| they aren't great fits for most commercial locations.
|
| They are also out of vogue as was mentioned, unless
| you're a coffee shop then these "cozy" items just aren't
| as common right now.
| dingnuts wrote:
| yes, really any soft surfaces will damp[0] (not "dampen")
| sound, but the techniques and materials can get very
| advanced (and expensive, and effective)
|
| 0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damping
| oaktowner wrote:
| Whoa! Thanks for the clarification. As a word aficionado,
| I did _not_ realize the correct form of this one.
| 93po wrote:
| as a fellow pedant, i also really appreciated this
| clarification. i love it when i learn i've been saying
| something wrong!
| oldkinglog wrote:
| Why can't "dampen" be applied to oscillators? It means
| "To lessen; to dull; to make less intense" in this case.
| 93po wrote:
| i think the point is that it's one of those words misused
| so widely that dictionaries updated the definition to
| include the incorrect use.
|
| dampen means to make something wet, or at least
| originally that's what it meant
| zerd wrote:
| According to https://www.etymonline.com/word/dampen it's
| meant "to dull or deaden, make weak" from 1630s and "to
| moisten, make humid" from 1827.
| gitinit wrote:
| Sound dampening artwork actually seems really
| interesting.
| chefandy wrote:
| Stuff that works well in homes often is a lot more
| complicated to implement in restaurants, where you're: a)
| constantly fighting grease buildup and hard-to-remove
| dust that clings to greasy or damp surfaces, b) often
| have a profit margin of like 2% _if you 're one of the
| successful ones,_ c) aside from looking clean, you have
| to worry about pest control, fire codes, health codes
| (you can't have built-up dust falling in people's food,
| d) etc etc etc etc. Also, how restaurants look is as, or
| in some cases more important than the quality of the
| food. A good, attractive, practical restaurant design is
| one of the things that can steer you towards success or
| failure. Much to many chefs chagrin, hip and attractive
| restaurants with shitty boring food are often more
| profitable than ones that only focus on the food.
| Marketing is annoyingly important.
|
| With, floors hardwood is a hard surface (so only mildly
| sound damping) so they're not too bad for cleaning and
| health stuff, but are expensive to install and take a lot
| to maintain if the worn-in look doesn't fit the
| aesthetic. Low-pile carpets can be shampood inexpensively
| for medium-term maintenance and replaced comparatively
| cheaply in the long run, but take a lot more effort to
| keep clean when someone drops a catering tray full of
| creme caramel and something with a port wine reduction.
|
| Artwork: anything that you'd want hanging on your walls
| is either going to need to be a print or covered with
| glass or plastic because it will get ruined otherwise.
|
| Acoustic panels are usually pretty ugly, difficult to
| clean, not resistant to pests, are a fire liability if
| coated in grease, etc.
|
| Curtains definitely are definitely viable, but if you've
| got enough of them to really impact the sound level, they
| probably need to be expensive ones, and expensive
| curtains can't just be tossed in the wash and pressed on
| an ironing board.
|
| It's not like they aren't effective, they're just not
| nearly as easy to deploy or maintain as they are in homes
| or offices.
| chefandy wrote:
| _Unrelated blathering because a lot of folks in tech don
| 't have much exposure to this stuff and I always enjoy
| seeing a slice of someone else's life:_ In general a lot
| of people are understandably perplexed by seemingly
| simple, avoidable problems that they encounter in
| restaurants-- you can chalk almost all of them up to
| misinformation, or deliberately obfuscated factors.
| Firstly, there's a ton of inaccurate folk knowledge about
| the way restaurants work... (most infuriatingly to me is
| the food safety stuff. Look up the incubation time for
| most foodborne illnesses and consider how many people
| blame some lower GI symptoms the meal that met their
| stomach lining 3 hours earlier.) Also, a big part of the
| restaurant mystique is making it all seem sort of easy,
| uncomplicated, and fun, even for regulars and the
| 'friends and family' crowd; underneath that thin veneer,
| it's absolute insanity. I've worked in tech and the
| restaurant business extensively. Most days, the pressure
| level is "we just discovered a possible active intruder
| in our production systems" for at least a few hours. It's
| exhausting, and one of the reasons drug and alcohol
| addiction is so prevalent. Knowing that an entire staff
| is breaking their back so you can have a fun cozy bite to
| eat makes the experience palpably worse, but it's true.
| That's why you'll usually find people who've worked in
| the service industry are serious over-tippers. You have
| to give up a lot of your humanity to do that work, and a
| lot of people you encounter respect you less instead of
| more for having made that sacrifice.
|
| I've proudly convinced so many people to not go into that
| business, though I've also convinced a few people to give
| it a shot. It's not a good choice for most people, but
| some people can't really do much else and be happy. In
| many ways, its especially tolerant to neurodivergent
| folks with different skillsets being downright useful in
| different roles. It's hard as hell though. There's a good
| reason that CIA (the school, not the spies) requires 6
| months of full-time back-of-the-house restaurant work to
| get admitted to their degree program.
| duped wrote:
| Honestly the cheapest way to muffle sound is to not
| create it in the first place. Guests make noise to hear
| themselves over other guests and the din of the room, the
| quieter the room, the quieter the guests, etc.
|
| Essentially, the louder the noise floor, the louder the
| signal has to get to be intelligible at every table,
| which raises the noise floor, creating a feedback loop.
| Good acoustic design in a space accounts for this by
| minimizing how much acoustic energy is present in the
| room - both by removing it (with acoustic treatment),
| spreading it away from sources (by isolating
| tables/booths, using hard surfaces to reflect sound away,
| etc), and preventing it from being created in the first
| place. For example, keeping bus stations behind galley
| doors and training staff not to clink
| silverware/glasses/dishes when filling bus bins and avoid
| playing loud music, etc.
|
| In my experience, most restaurants fail at this because
| all the people who do it well are in the high-end
| restaurant business, which most restaurants are not. If
| the key to a space that isn't too loud is to limit the
| number of patrons, have dining room space allocated to
| treatment between tables, have highly trained staff with
| consistent management, and a big enough kitchen space
| with heavy enough doors to isolate the sound within -
| your only option is to be a high end restaurant.
|
| But the high end places fail at it because they don't
| care and want to maximize the guest throughput because
| their margins still suck.
| roughly wrote:
| If you're near Berkeley, CA, one of the owners of the
| restaurant Comal also owns a sound company that builds that
| kind of system, and they use Comal as a showplace. The
| effect is astounding - it's an industrial-style design, and
| it's got auditory "ambiance", but you can have a full
| conversation at normal speaking volumes with everyone at
| the table. It's the kind of thing where once you experience
| it, you'll judge the hell out of any other "fancy"
| restaurant you go to that doesn't have it.
| Aaronstotle wrote:
| Been to Comal a few times, need to go again and pay
| closer attention
| floatrock wrote:
| Comal is one of the subjects of that podcast episode
| dekhn wrote:
| Oh neat: https://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-0
| 8/restaurant...
|
| Meyer Sound which did the sound install for the space is
| a long-time well-known innovator in sound tech- for
| example, establishing vertical line arrays. Years ago the
| son of the founder was doing advanced space modelling for
| the best sound (basically, entering the room geometry and
| simulating with helmholtz equations).
|
| I will go there just for the experience.
| londons_explore wrote:
| > restaurants can have good sound design, but it doesn't
| come cheap.
|
| Carpet the ceiling and the walls. Super cheap, super
| effective.
|
| Ideally carpet the floor too - and if you use carpet tiles
| then when a customer spills something uncleanable on a tile
| it's a 5 minute non-expert job to pull up a tile and put in
| a new one.
| duped wrote:
| > Carpet the ceiling and the walls. Super cheap, super
| effective.
|
| Super dangerous and illegal, too.
|
| The reason that professionals _don 't_ do this is because
| no one will permit it, not because there's some scam on
| acoustic foam and diffusers... well there is but it's not
| the acousticians' fault. It's a massive fire hazard.
| brulard wrote:
| source? Seems like with this logic, wood, wallpapers etc.
| would be illegal as well. Doesn't make sense to me
| duped wrote:
| My source is the IBC section 803 (1), which I only know
| about because I've had the misfortune of needing to know
| about getting building permits for acoustically treating
| an office space in my career (which itself is a long and
| boring story about a failed startup).
|
| The way the building code is written doesn't _explicitly_
| ban any material from walls /ceilings, but rather sets
| the constraints on the performance of the material when
| exposed to heat. There are higher limits for
| walls/ceilings than for floors because flames climb. Wall
| coverings (including wall paper and its glue) have to be
| flame retardant to meet code. There have been some
| infamous fires in the past, which is why this code exists
| (building codes are written in blood, as they say).
|
| Most carpet doesn't go on walls, so it doesn't meet code,
| unlike wallpaper. And building inspectors are
| conservative people that are unlikely to permit you to do
| anything weird, even if you can prove by the letter of
| the IBC that some material is up to snuff.
|
| (1) https://codes.iccsafe.org/content/IBC2021P2/chapter-8
| -interi...
|
| Scroll down to see the details on wall textiles,
| specifically.
| buildsjets wrote:
| Does one hundred dead bodies count as a source?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Station_nightclub_fire
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _It 's a massive fire hazard._
|
| You mean we haven't figured out a material that both
| dampens sound _and_ is fire resistant?
|
| Being as how the former quality is pretty easy, I find
| this hard to believe.
| duped wrote:
| No we have this, it just isn't as cheap as floor
| carpeting.
|
| In fact, if you ever DIY some acoustic gobos or panels,
| rockwool insulation is about the best material you can
| find at the hardware store. But like another comment
| mentioned there are other concerns in commercial spaces,
| like cleaning/dusting.
| duderific wrote:
| > Loud restaurants are damaging for the waitstaff's health.
| You can work for hours in an environment so loud that OSHA
| would demand hearing protection.
|
| I should preface by saying that I have some existing
| tinnitus that developed from playing drums in rock bands in
| my 20's without proper ear protection. It's manageable and
| quiet enough that it can be largely ignored.
|
| Recently I visited Las Vegas, and I ate at the well known
| restaurant Tao. It was so incredibly loud, for a sustained
| period of time, that it triggered the tinnitus in my left
| ear to such an extent that I was essentially deaf in my
| left ear the next morning. It gradually receded to loud
| ringing, and then was back to my "normal" level of tinnitus
| after a couple of weeks.
|
| I guess I'll have to bring my own hearing protection to
| restaurants now. Kind of a sad state of affairs.
| UI_at_80x24 wrote:
| Not to act like an arm-chair doctor but have you ever
| considered that you may be on the ASD spectrum?
|
| That function of being able to mentally 'filter out' specific
| voices within a crowd is (semi?) common signal of autism.
| More accurately; I'm like that and I am autistic, I've read
| that it happens to a lot of others.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| It can also happen with ADHD. I seem to have difficulty
| integrating sensory information and thinking at the same
| time. If it's noisy, it causes a series of buffer overflows
| at every level of cognition.
| mrandish wrote:
| Yep, I have ADHD and have always needed to put more
| effort toward parsing a particular sound in a dense sound
| field than other people. I've also always had trouble
| quickly identifying a particular object in a dense visual
| field. My wife jokes I'm "the world's worst 'Where's
| Waldo' player".
|
| I can still manage to do these things but it takes
| longer, requires more effort and I'm generally never as
| good at it as others seem to be. I've always suspected
| these two things are related to each other and to my
| ADHD. There's a related audio issue I suspect is also
| tied to ADHD. When I'm mentally focused on a task, if
| someone interrupts me, I often miss the first couple
| words they say. Fortunately, when it happens I can
| usually derive the missing context from the rest of the
| content. Interestingly, it's not that I didn't hear the
| sound of the words, it feels more like a lag in mental
| context switching to parse the sounds into meaning.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| > I've also always had trouble quickly identifying a
| particular object in a dense visual field.
|
| I never considered ADHD affecting my visual processing
| but it very well could be.
|
| > Interestingly, it's not that I didn't hear the sound of
| the words, it feels more like a lag in mental context
| switching to parse the sounds into meaning.
|
| Happens to me all the time, I'm listening but sometimes
| my brain blips. I hear the words, but I no longer
| remember them by the time I'm trying to understand them.
| jives wrote:
| I'm recently diagnosed, and I'm this way with auditory and
| visual input. If I go to a crowded sports bar with TVs, I'm
| basically useless.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| The one thing that annoys me about restaurants and other
| crowded places... is the insistence on playing music to
| attempt(?) to cover the sound!
|
| I simply don't understand it, why the hell would I want a
| noisy place where I can barely hear anyone to have MORE
| noise!? it's not even good quality noise, it's usually top 40
| from 10 years ago being blasted over shit speakers.
| exe34 wrote:
| I patronize them - from a distance.
| j33zusjuice wrote:
| Have you tried earplugs like Loop or Eargasm? I've considered
| them for a while, but never pulled the trigger. Reddit seemed
| to prefer Loops to Eargasms.
|
| I actually find foam earplugs make voices easier to hear. I
| can have conversations during concerts with them somehow, in
| fact. So I figure if foam earplugs can do that for me, then
| earplugs designed to block only unwanted noise are probably
| even better.
|
| Case in point, I was recently at a Swans concert---they play
| very long sets, like 3 hours---and my back got tight, so I
| started stretching. I heard someone 20 ft away talking shit!
| They said, "yeah, I guess you can do your Pilates here." I
| finished the stretch and then heard, "oh, I guess he was just
| stretching."
| treflop wrote:
| There's something called Auditory Processing Disorder where
| you are not able to able to differentiate sound and it
| supposedly can develop later in life.
|
| I've had it since I was a kid because I always passed the
| hearing tests but every other kid had no trouble listening to
| music and understanding the words and so on so I put two and
| two together.
|
| Anyway, I have never been able to understand anyone in any
| loud public space which absolutely blows when you're not a
| home body.
|
| See
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auditory_processing_disorder
| simmons wrote:
| Thank you for the name of this disorder and link! I've also
| had this my whole life, and I knew it was a thing that
| wasn't terribly rare (based on reading comments from others
| in the past, here on HN and elsewhere), but I think this is
| the first time I've seen a name for this condition.
|
| The Wikipedia page seems to really describe my condition,
| except for the potential overlap with ADHD. For example,
| the "difficulty following oral instructions". I can read
| something and retain it forever, but if someone speaks to
| me, it will often go in one ear and out the other.
|
| I sometimes wonder if this could be a result of being a
| very introverted child who started reading at around 3 or 4
| years old. (Because reading is so awesome, why bother
| listening to people -- and improving your auditory
| neurology -- after that?)
|
| I think I've probably just adapted to the condition. It
| doesn't seem like any sort of problem or disability. But I
| suspect others around me find it much more annoying than I
| do. ;)
| albert_e wrote:
| One thing I feel in my personal experience --
|
| while I am doing something -- inability to switch
| attention to someone speaking to me if they do not first
| ask for my attention (excuse me / hello / myname / cough
| / knock) before diving into speaking in sentences.
|
| very often by the time i start paying attention to them
| speaking -- they are 4-5 words into their sentence and I
| have missed the context of what they are talking about
| and i have to ask them to stop and repeat from start
|
| This has happened with me in multiple settings (work and
| personal life)
|
| Not sure if this is a common thing along with APD - which
| i recognize some symptoms of in myself
| Arrath wrote:
| This describes well something I've learned about myself.
| I just figured it was excessive focus, to the point of
| drowning out the outside world.
| onemoresoop wrote:
| Is the excessive focus the same as hyperfocus?
| Arrath wrote:
| Probably, yeah.
| masterj wrote:
| You may not have hearing loss, but you might actually
| benefit from modern hearing aids which can attenuate
| background noise better than consumer noise cancelling
| headphones. My partner has APD and hearing aids were a
| life-changer for them.
|
| Consumer stuff is also getting better really quickly
| though
| loceng wrote:
| My reply here may be useful to you - where I mention Berard
| AIT (Auditory Integration Training) and my own experience
| with hearing difficulties, which I was able to solve with
| AIT at age 23 (now 41):
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40516028
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| I'm one of those annoying ADHD people who will hear
| everything you're saying, ask "What?," and then a second
| later I've finished processing the audio in my head and am
| ready to continue the conversation. Similarly, I can't
| readily differentiate voices from melody in songs. Far too
| many songs don't have strong enough vocal tracks and the
| songs might as well just be mud to me. I suppose it's why I
| gravitated towards rap and R&B growing up.
| follower wrote:
| > [...] ADHD people who will hear everything you're saying,
| ask "What?," and then a second later I've finished
| processing the audio in my head and am ready to continue
| the conversation.
|
| You know, until you mentioned it, I'd never thought that
| that experience might have an ADHD-related component to it.
| Interesting.
| instagib wrote:
| My hearing aids have a custom directional hearing section I
| can modify. I'll give this a try next time I'm in a crowded
| area.
| s0rce wrote:
| There are some restaurants we don't often go to because they
| are too loud to be enjoyable. Luckily its patio weather most
| of the year here in California so eating outside is generally
| much quieter and enjoyable.
|
| I also have trouble discerning sounds in crowded spaces.
| Thanks for sharing your diagnosis, really interesting to
| think about.
| doctorwho42 wrote:
| I am like you, I have extremely sensitive hearing.
|
| My solution to this problem is to carry on my keychain a pair
| of concert rated hearing protection earbuds. It's not a
| perfect solution, but you'd be surprised at how helpful it is
| to have some highs and lows filtered out.
|
| Only downside beyond not being perfect, is people tend to
| think I put them in to block sound entirely. So I usually end
| up fielding questions about what they are, with a resulting
| 'man that's a smart idea'
|
| Ymmv
| pmarreck wrote:
| I can't find the article now but I read that there's actually
| 2 kinds of deafness, auditory deafness and signal processing
| deafness.
|
| Not sure if audiologists phoning it in will know how to test
| for the latter
| loceng wrote:
| I'll first ask the question of do you remember if you had any
| ear infections as a child - and were they painful at all?
|
| It sounds like that audiologist still wasn't specialized
| enough - otherwise I feel like your story would have extended
| differently; high demand mainstream audiologists, including
| the mainstream audiologist profession, don't seem to have a
| certain lineage of knowledge that I dramatically benefit from
| first when I was 23 (now 41), when I was in essentially a
| high-functioning Asperger's state - to where my hearing had
| devolved into a hyperacusis state - a severe hypersensitivity
| to sound - but where prior to that I had the same symptoms of
| difficulty with conversation, and busy rooms with lots of
| noise was extremely mentally draining-fatiguing, not
| realizing it was putting my mind on overdrive drying to
| actively focus and hone in on sounds vs. it autonomously
| happening.
|
| Have you ever heard of Berard AIT (Auditory Integration
| Training/Therapy) or the Tomatis method? There's a book on
| the sound therapies called "Hearing Equals Behavior: Updated
| and Expanded."
|
| There's a non-standard audiogram to check for imbalances in
| the hearing. The standard audiogram is they just pick say 30
| Dbs volume and check various frequencies in each ear at that
| frequency, and if you can hear that - then "great!" The non-
| standard audiogram checking for imbalances checks for HOW
| LOW-QUIET of a sound you can hear at different frequencies,
| and interestingly, with 100% accuracy you can predict a set
| of behaviours that a person will have if they have an
| imbalance at certain frequencies like 1000 Hz; not all
| frequencies have associated behaviours with them.
|
| An example of an imbalance would be if at 1000 Hz in your
| left ear the lowest sound you could hear was 15 Dbs, but in
| right ear you could hear at 10 Dbs - an imbalance of 5 Dbs,
| but where the idea is that the body-brain-mind is a system of
| finding homeostasis and equilibrium, so it should be able to
| have it so sounds are heard at the same level - evenly, save
| for actual physical damage. This is just a simple example and
| there can be high peaks and valleys that show up in the non-
| standard audiogram.
|
| I have a similar story as yours. My issues with sound were
| almost identified in Grade 2 when going from a kindergarten
| setting, where there were no real performance or attention
| expectations, to Grade 2. The teacher noted I was having
| trouble paying attention. They thought maybe I had hearing
| issues, it was a private school and so they brought in an
| audiologist. My hearing was fantastic! So indeed,
| unfortunately, 30+ years ago especially they didn't consider
| that my hearing could be " _too good_ " - where sound was
| overwhelming me; so I was hypersensitive to sound, arguably
| hyposensitive to touch and other senses, and it was
| medications in my late teens and early 20s that caused my
| hearing to get super hypersensitive - to the point where I
| was in what I consider a torture state for 8 months - where
| even the sound of blinking was painful, or at least that was
| the sensory I was associating the pain with - until I was
| forced to do my own research and eventually stumbled into
| Berard AIT.
|
| There's also pre-care questionnaires that some practitioners
| offer - a checklist for behaviour of a child, and also of an
| adult, where I had ~80% of the behaviours both as a child and
| as an adult, e.g. preferred to sit in the back or corner of a
| classroom, essentially as there'd be less directions noise
| would be coming from, had trouble relaying a story or
| following instructions, etc.
|
| Adult checklist:
| https://www.aithelps.com/auditory_care_adults.php
|
| Child checklist: https://www.aithelps.com/auditory_care.php
|
| NOTE: these places started offering "home programs" to send
| some audio equipment and the specially modified music,
| however I won't personally trust them until I've had the
| chance to do what I'd consider to be thoroughly done research
| to compare the original high-quality sound equipment that
| would produce the absolute highest quality of frequencies vs.
| what the rentable-shippable equipment produces.
|
| Someday I need to write a chapter of a book or perhaps a
| whole book on my experiences of it all - the before and after
| state, the blocked development process (e.g. autistic state)
| that got unblocked and the development process that began to
| unlock - essentially I was blocked from processing emotions
| properly, so I arguably had a lifelong backlog of unprocessed
| memories with emotions associated with them needing to be
| labeled to be organized, as well as PTSD from many very
| intense traumatic years.
| nomat wrote:
| This is incredibly enlightening. Thank you.
| victor106 wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Is there a name for this condition?
| vidarh wrote:
| 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.
| wruza wrote:
| 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.
| ghaff wrote:
| It's sort of inevitable in crowded situations. My main
| objection is when there's _also_ loud music when that really
| isn 't the purpose of the gathering.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| It's certainly their issue if they want to continue spending
| time with the group doing what most of the group prefers.
|
| > _I don 't get why people go there and leave money, cause I
| wouldn't go there even for that money._
|
| That's a problem with lack of empathy and understanding on
| your part, not with the group dynanimcs of that person's
| friends.
| wruza wrote:
| Group dynamics are hard, see Abilene paradox.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abilene_paradox
| boringg wrote:
| Always suspected this - didn't know there was an actual
| term for it. Thanks!
| drewg123 wrote:
| You don't always have a choice. Sometimes there are loud
| places where you just have to be (airports, train stations,
| etc). My most frustrating time is transiting airports with my
| wife, who is a very quiet talker.
| dghughes wrote:
| 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.
| ddmf wrote:
| 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.
| jives wrote:
| I'm recently diagnosed and I experience the same. Listening
| to someone in a crowded room takes a ton of effort because my
| brain wants to track all of the other conversations and
| noises.
| dnpls wrote:
| The article mentions "The team is working to expand the system
| to earbuds and hearing aids in the future."
| carlosjobim wrote:
| > 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.
| foobarian wrote:
| I happened to go out with a group of workers from a deaf
| school. It was a particularly loud and annoying bar and it
| didn't bother them one bit. :-)
| Pxtl wrote:
| My favorite case of this awkwardness:
|
| 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)
| Pxtl wrote:
| 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.
| solarengineer wrote:
| Shokz has these bone conductor headsets with mics.
| tmtvl wrote:
| I had Shokz bone-conducting headphones (openmove or
| something like that?), but unfortunately the battery died
| after a single charge. It was a shame 'cause I was really
| fond of them. If/when my headphones give the ghost I'll
| give them another shot.
| nashashmi wrote:
| Tip for anyone trying to communicate in noisy room:
|
| 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
| ljf wrote:
| 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.
| aquafox wrote:
| It seems you are describing the Cocktail party effect:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocktail_party_effect
| jaustin wrote:
| Next can we have them identify ambient noises that need
| amplification for safety reasons, like the nearly-silent electric
| car about to run me over, or the bike I'm about to accidentally
| step in front of? As someone who spends a bit too much of my time
| walking around on calls, I think selective amplification of
| ambient sounds for safety would be amazing!
| bartread wrote:
| Are you vision impaired?
| cushychicken wrote:
| 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.
| fennecfoxy wrote:
| I wouldn't ever want Sonos hearing aids. Universally Sonos
| units have basic functionality problems such as not
| reconnecting to Wifi that has gone down and come back up,
| especially if the Wifi has changed channel during that time.
|
| The "technical" solution is to pull the plug and reboot it
| (which you can't even do remotely, even if it's connected to
| Wifi and you want to reboot because Spotify connect on Sonos
| can be buggy as hell).
|
| I can keep a wifi connection up myself and always reconnect
| using an esp or similar TI etc module...is it so hard for the
| Sonos firmware devs to do something so basic?
| richwater wrote:
| Spotify connect on most devices is buggy as hell.
| ttpphd wrote:
| If you read the paper, nothing has changed. They still depend
| on the target talker not having competing co located sounds or
| voice.
| polartx wrote:
| 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.
| xtracto wrote:
| I use HyperX Cloud gaming headset for my work. Several years
| ago we bought them for our employees at a noisy "open office"
| environment (full of Mexicans, and you may know that we tend
| to be pretty noisy haha) and they worked pretty well (they
| have this microphone that extends from the headphones can be
| moved up or down).
|
| Apparently the microphone has noise cancelling [1], and it
| seems to work pretty well. Nowadays at home, I've been in
| calls where my wife is using the blender at high speed, I get
| annoyed by it, but none of my colleagues hear it (between the
| headset NC and Google Meet's NC apparently it works pretty
| well)
|
| [1] https://hyperx.com/products/hyperx-cloud-iii-wired-
| gaming-he... Crystal-Clear 10mm microphone, noise-cancelling,
| with LED mic-mute indicator
| nox101 wrote:
| Sounds like a great way to spy on all people and extract all
| conversations. I can't wait for judges to declare that all
| conversation at your office must be recorded like some of them
| have for chat. This tech is a step to enable such a thing.
| adwi wrote:
| The "cocktail party effect" externalized. Extremely cool.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocktail_party_effect
| mateus1 wrote:
| Very interesting, concept. I have a friend with seeming no
| hearing issues that has to cup his ears when in louder
| environments such as bars, restaurants, etc. I'm wondering if
| anyone here has a solution to that.
| btbuildem wrote:
| 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"
| causi wrote:
| I would like AI headphones that let me pinpoint the source of
| noises, such as inside a car engine.
| classified wrote:
| Is it April 1st already?
| nutanc wrote:
| What about the privacy concerns? So basically I can just look at
| a couple of people talking and eavesdrop?
| anonu wrote:
| How does this technology change anything? Don't eavesdrop...
| anonu wrote:
| By looking at them AND pressing a button. But they might be able
| to get rid of the button with some sensors and AI.
| entico wrote:
| cant wait to see people using earphones at parties
| osjp1988 wrote:
| Great application. The should have functionality to mute one
| person as well. http://jayaprakash.page
| VikingCoder wrote:
| Fry_Shut_Up_And_Take_My_Money.gif
| oakpond wrote:
| Honestly AI speech recognition still sucks so bad I'm basically
| convinced it will fall on its face in many daily use cases.
|
| I realize this is slightly tangential, but please don't replace
| customer support with chatbots or whatever you want to call them.
| It's a freaking horrible experience.
| resource_waste wrote:
| >A University of Washington team
|
| Oh, so it barely works and its a proof of concept.
|
| What is the interesting thing here? We all know how sound waves
| work. Pretty sure this technology is old. Until there is a
| product here, it just sounds like you are rehashing noise
| cancellation.
|
| Academia has dug this grave of skepticism. I just have 0 faith
| this will get to market through University of Washington. Maybe
| it will be patented and used even less!
| m3kw9 wrote:
| This is the equivalent of staring but for ears.
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| Presumably this could be used to block out specific
| voices/sounds.
|
| There's an episode of the sci-fi show Black Mirror (White
| Christmas), where a person is convicted of some hideous crime and
| permanently blocked/made invisible and inaudible from everyone
| (the entire population has embedded audio/video processing
| enhancements by then).
|
| You can imagine future headphones where you could block out the
| guy in your office with the annoying laugh our download 'blocks'
| from the headphone appstore - no more Rick Astley or the
| politician you don't like etc.
| ck_one wrote:
| Pretty cool what they are working on. However, I wished there
| would be more funding for restoring hair cells which are the root
| cause for most people with hearing loss.
|
| Researchers are getting closer. Dr. Chen from Harvard was able to
| regenerate hair cells in mature mice last year.
|
| The problem is also becoming more widespread. 30 Mio people in
| the US and 400 Mio people worldwide have disabling hearing loss.
| Regenerating hair cells and the synapses around them would also
| cure Tinnitus. 30 Mio x $5k for a treatment = $60B market
| (probably way bigger with aging population)
|
| I think we probably need more rich tech billionaires to get
| affected to attract large funding.
|
| What billionaires that you know are affected besides:
|
| - Brad Jacobs
|
| - Ryan from Flexport/Founders Fund
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| While not exactly the same, I came across an app called Tunity
| the other day. It allows you to use your phone camera to catch
| the live audio feed of the television that you are attempting to
| watch, whether the audio is muted or if it's in a loud, crowded
| location, like a sports bar or airport. I haven't used it, but
| it's an interesting concept.
| andy wrote:
| I opened an issue with this. Maybe someone here knows.
|
| I see a Python script I can run on my computer, I haven't tried
| it yet, but I think I could connect a microphone and process
| real-time audio and output it in real time, but I don't know how
| to detect the user looking at someone. Could you tell me how that
| works?
| idunnoman1222 wrote:
| To use the system, a person wearing off-the-shelf headphones
| fitted with microphones taps a button while directing their
| head at someone talking. The sound waves from that speaker's
| voice then should reach the microphones on both sides of the
| headset simultaneously;
|
| I guess by reading the article?
| hpen wrote:
| Does this use Computer Vision camera or how does it work?
| OkGoDoIt wrote:
| The open source code is at
| https://github.com/vb000/LookOnceToHear and the research paper is
| at https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.06289
|
| 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.
| glial wrote:
| This is pretty amazing -- and a practical application of a
| solution to a notoriously tricky problem called the "cocktail
| party problem."[1] For a small subset of researchers, writing an
| algorithm to isolate a voice in a crowd is on par with e.g.
| writing an AI to play Go.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocktail_party_effect
| jmugan wrote:
| I want to filter out all non-nature sounds. I dream of walking
| through the airport or the park in peace. AI seems the way to go
| with that since you have to predict the sound to counteract it.
| Good to see we are finally making progress.
| chrisknyfe wrote:
| Before getting all excited that your ML model runs on your brand
| new 2024 macbook, before you run off to create earbuds / hearing
| aids with it, please try to run it on-target and see whether your
| model runs within your runtime budget / power budget / device
| size budget / battery life budget.
|
| And make sure if you're going to do bluetooth + wireless,
| remember that both bluetooth and wifi transmit on 2.4 GHz, and
| need to coordinate in order to coexist in the same IoT device.
| There are interconnects and wire protocols to connect the
| bluetooth and wifi chips together - or, preferably, you buy a
| chip that does both.
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