I’ve often sat in wonder and awe of my grandfather. Being hearing impaired for the better part of 50 years, he has had to utilize some form of hearing aids since he returned from the Korean War. Constantly changing batteries, fine tuning specific devices, and dealing with VA hospitals, my grandfather became accustomed to hearing the world through the machines placed in his ears. Whereas one might find this kind of impairment to be to their detriment, I always thought it to be a kind of freedom. He seemed, more often than not, to choose the specific time and place that he would wear his hearing aids. He would selectively tune out the world, as he so frequently chose, and live a blissful life of pure silence.
A Kickstarter from Doppler Labs seeks to allow backers to do what my grandfather has done for years: Namely, tune out the world. From their Kickstarter page:
Through two truly wireless, in-ear buds and a smartphone app, Here allows you to instantly control real world audio so you can hear what you want to hear – no matter the situation – and be fully immersed in your audio environment.
The concept has enjoyed a lot of publicity on several different websites.
Can you imagine having a volume control for the real world? How many times have you wished for a remote that can mute the baby sitting behind you on a plane? Or silence the deafening snore of your bedmate? This product may very well be a godsend to the light sleepers and globetrotters of the world.
Here’s how they work:
The technology used in Here is fundamentally different from any audio technology that has come before it. Here uses a variety of signal processing algorithms that target specific frequency ranges to modify sound as it enters your ears. Each Here bud captures incoming sound waves, processes the audio, and then plays back the desired result with no perceivable latency (i.e. in under 30 microseconds).
The project already has amassed more than half of its goal of $250,000 and has a little less than a month to go. There is little doubt it will reach its goal in time, but if you want to be in on the ground floor and receive some rather lucrative bonuses, check out the Kickstarter page now and donate today.
