Gadgetory

anyone who knows me would tell you that I'm super obnoxious about sound I mean that's why I'm recording this in a soundproof closet how would you describe my taste in headphones problematic you're working on sound right there alright I am working on sound right now and it's not so bad you'd hate it it's like a scene movie with me it's one of the worst experiences I saw Jurassic world with you and you complained about the sound the entire time yeah I'm that guy wearing custom molded ear plugs to a concert to make it sound better and protect my hearing so I got pretty excited when I saw this Kickstarter for something called the here active listening system it's essentially putting a studio in your ears so you can live curate the audio you hear so you have the perfect audio experience for you every single time this is super cool right the idea is that you can put these things in your ears and take control of the sound around you the company making here is called Doppler labs they're an immersive wearable tech company what we mean by that is we create products that hopefully help you get computing out of the way of your daily life look I know what you're thinking and it's definitely not lost on me that we had sound problems in an interview about sound anyway dopplers goals sound really broad but basically they want to make he robles tiny products you put in your ears to enhance your world here is just one of those products and one of its main goals is to mess with the balance of frequencies and the sound around you so the way it works is the audio goes to your ear the stuff you don't want a target reduce goes back but then we create antinodes in that specific specific frequency so what your ear ends up hearing again with zero latency is the real world - this frequency you've told it to remove so for instance I'm listening to this loud indie band in a super cool underground club you've probably never heard of the sound guy is completely drunk and there's too much snare in the mix if I find the frequency as the snare is occupying I could turn down just those frequencies and smooth out the mix going to my ears this is what sound engineers have been doing for decades in live sound and recording but what the hear system aims to do is bring these effects directly to your ears and tailored directly to your tastes it goes a little beyond EQ to I should say the effects you're about to hear are just an approximation of what here actually sounds like but it is pretty close I can flange your entire order all of it which is kind of nutty or I can reverb your entire world or I can echo your entire world right as you enjoy it which is intense I can bit crush your entire world it does sound wild and it's a lot of fun I haven't tried the finished product yet but the prototypes I tried did have some issues it's hard to have a conversation with them in your ears because of something called the occlusion effect where you hear your own voice resonating through your skull a lot like this there's also this whiny grainy layer of noise that sits under everything just loud enough to be perceived they also tend to clip and distort when the sound level rises above a conversational volume I have to imagine dopplers going to fix these issues by the time here is actually available but there was one problem I'm not sure will go away the seal between the earbuds and my ear wasn't that snug and that means that here isn't completely isolated from the outside world so when I turn down the volume for instance sound from the outside still leaks in and it sort of kills the illusion and remove some of the control that the product needs in order to work you know ears come in all different sizes and shapes and once you try to make a product like this you realize quickly that we can fit a vast majority but there's probably still going to be an ear or two out there in the world that we you know may not fit optimally in they've definitely thought about this problem though and they'll include three sizes of rubber ear tips with each pair so are you guys at a party like checking out other people's ears like I have like inspecting shapes and sizes into something car and like look at people Siri text each other ages all the time of weird ears it's a good thought process so how would I fit and that person say here those are really funky ears it's that borderline obsession with ears that drives Doppler actually their first product dubs was a simple pair of ear plugs while dubs were a compelling product on their own Doppler used them to see if people really wanted to be seen in public with designer objects in their ears at all before moving on to more ambitious projects it helped us see that these categories and especially in your wearable tech is something that people really do get excited about if you approach it the right way and that really built the foundation for our flagship product you look at people's ears on the subway I guess where Google glass was super weird to see a screen attached to somebody's face it's not uncommon to see ear but so you guys kind of have it had a head start in like social acceptance yeah I think that's what we from the very GetGo was excited about to introduce technology into the ear we felt was a more approachable place to start people it's easier for people to kind of accept that you may have something in your ears when you're interact with someone and it sounds like here is just the beginning of that being able to change the acoustic properties of a concert is great but here isn't designed to be worn all day or in every situation for one thing their tiny battery is only lasts for about four or five hours although they do come with a nifty charging case that can charge them on the go but Dopp was definitely moving in that direction of the hero bowl an object you put in your ear when you first wake up and you leave it there until you go to bed we want to put a computer speaker mic and everyone's ear right that's a computer of course along with it and that's a lofty mission and as evidenced by the Dubs as a starting point we're very conscious about step functions to make sure we can get there and this product for us is very much a episodic nuance product for a niche audience that will use it when they go out but if they get all the steps right Doppler could be the company that creates the babel fish or tiny in your virtual assistants like the ones in her we look at this much more in that vein of kind of things that enhance your life are hopefully you know your smart assistant the thing that allows you to communicate better that allows you to really we're trying to put something in your ear that becomes indispensable long term and really becomes part of the way you interact with the world the here system is probably not that indispensable here we'll Noah is talking about but it could be an important step in the right direction the prototype is only six months old and it's already really impressive so who knows maybe Doppler we'll be the ones to put a personal assistant in our ears but in the meantime I'm pretty pumped about being able to mess with the sound around me