Earplugs the future with the "switch" of the world

the original article was published on June 2 2015. I> - approx. Perevi.] Doppler launches a new product - a set of ear plugs, called « Here », that if you wish to adjust the volume of the world. General Director Noah Kraft (Noah Kraft) has given the project the name "supersluh 1.0».



In a windowless room with concrete walls, which looks like a backdrop for the film "Hostage 4", the chairman of the board of directors Doppler Fritz Lanman (Fritz Lanman) opens the box and pulls out two round white earphone. Their thickness comparable to the thickness of peanut cookies Reese's, that's only a diameter less than four times. Lanman, making sure Here are connected to his iPhone, he sends them to me. I put the device in the ears, and he begins his story.



On the left - Noah Kraft i>

This is not a pair of headphones or a hearing aid. These earplugs enable you to customize your hearing - they are able to mute or enhance the sound of the world that is becoming louder. They can brighten up your regular trips to and from work, and make the sound at a concert in section 331 as good as in the first row.

More importantly, Here - that's just the beginning of a large project to create Doppler «hearables», a device that we carry in our ears constantly, all day long. The problem of the world is that it is too loud. Wearing earplugs Here, you get a personalized equalizer and the ability to control the volume of the sound coming into your ears.

The unit can mute the sound or to make them louder, you can "tweak" the bass, and even selectively silence the sounds you want to hear, for example, harsh sounds subway or a baby crying. "The rumor - is human dignity, and we want to make it amazing - said Lanman. - Have in their ears volume control - amazing. "

As he spoke, I was changing device settings using a smartphone, and suddenly his voice became louder Lanman 3 dB. I replayed the settings in the other direction and set the control to -12 dB - his voice almost a whisper. Then I pressed one button Doppler application menu "Effects" and chairman of the board it started to give multiple echoes; I pressed another, and the impression that we are at the stage of Carnegie Hall.



During the 30-minute presentation Lanman included music and adjust each frequency separately for me personally. It imposes on the music flanging effects, echo, and then turn the fuzz effect, and it seemed to me that my ears will explode (the developers thought it would be fun, so add this feature).

This is just an early prototype. Putting Here, you constantly hear some noise, not giving forget that in the ears of the device is inserted. Also, when I am completely "off" Lanman, I could still hear him, but he assures me that everything will change when they finish work on noise reduction. When activated with a terrible title "Suppression of children", specially created for the killing of children's screams, his voice Lanman also become noticeably quieter.

But when I turned down the bass track «Outside» Calvin Harris almost to a minimum, and nobody but me did not hear, I really felt like a superman.

Now, can you hear me? H4> Team Doppler fancies himself the first to come up with a modified hearing, unrelated to the hearing, but it is not so. According to some reports, even the best first headphones , invented more than one hundred years ago by Nathaniel Baldwin from Utah, is an amalgamation of the amplifier and suppressor. In 2005, a group of developers Human Beans from the United Kingdom took part in the competition to develop the so-called « hearwear » and created several different prototypes. In this area, there are plenty of different studies, among which are the work Finnish researchers assume that the headphones can successfully create a "model of the real environment psevdoakusticheskuyu».



But that does not take away from the Doppler, it's the fact that they embody theoretical studies into practice. This can be an even bigger problem: no one likes to wear hearing aids, and for this reason of Bluetooth-headset began to be perceived seriously. But do not think that Kraft did not realize the mistakes that made Google with its Google Glass.

Kraft believes that it is necessary first of all to explain clearly what are the like and, more importantly, what they are not. Here we need not to wear them 24 hours a day without taking off, listening to Spotify, talking to Siri and making phone calls. Team Doppler specifically exclude these functions from its creation - the decision was the result of serious internal disputes.

"This is a niche product - says Kraft. - Basically it will buy music lovers: the personal tuning of sound in a concert - this is the first application of the method, which we have come up ».

After that, the concept of the project was wider. Kraft compares Doppler with Microsoft and Apple, and the motto of "computer speaker and microphone in each ear" - a kind of improvisation on the slogan Microsoft «computer on every desk and in every home." Kraft says about the invention of new categories and often uses words like «hearables» and «audioberushi", which makes him look like a tough guy in Silicon Valley.

But he has a plan.

Embodying project to life h4> Doppler might not be. In early 2013 he created Lanman sold advisory services company Livestar Pinterest. He has long held the position of Head of Corporate Strategy at Microsoft, and also served as an early investor for companies Square and Pinterest. He was rich, tired and wanted to take a break.

But Lanmanu came his friend (an outstanding leader of the label, which does not call Lanman) and said that he would have to meet "the guy." "This guy" was Kraft. Kraft, a recent graduate of Brown University with a shock of red hair, a long beard and a talent for creating spectacular presentations, engaged in media consulting for Google and the record companies, and also produced a film by Martin Scorsese. And he had an idea.

Well, not quite the idea. He's just a lot of thinking about music and sound during the tour with the electronic musician (he Craft - a drummer and a big fan of music). He "hung up" on concert stages, each time noticing how the sound quality varies from excellent to trash, depending on the listening position in the room. "Pay you the same money - he says - but if you get up on a long number on the left side of the stage, the sound changes dramatically!" What if there is a way to optimize their own ears and not to rely on a sound engineer?



Creative Craft is constantly soaring in the clouds, and the engineer Lanman, who believes that "cloud" servers are relevant to perfectly complement each other. "I wanted to give him money, so he did this thing," - says Lanman. But Kraft did not need the money - he needed a partner. "It really brought me crazy theme with ears" - said Lanman. He saw a million repetitive devices on the wrists of people - the idea of ​​Kraft looked different. "Ears - it is a logical place, because we put them in the device ever since the appearance of Walkman».

The first product was Doppler Dubs - earplugs. Kraft asked to call them "acoustic filter", but in fact it's just a gag improved, mutes the selected frequency. It's incredibly boring and does not stand out product category, which makes Dubs even more surprising: they were pretty well освещены in the press, and even won the Red Dot Design Award in April. The partners are Dubs SoulCycle and Bonnaroo, Coachella and in this year issued a couple of Dubs each of 135,000 participants of the festival.

Dubs created with a specific purpose: to establish partnerships, to establish the supply chain and promote the name of the Doppler, to begin to create first-class team of engineers and developers. But this was not the end, as in the case Here.

From the outset, the team worked on signal processing and frequency settings, changing algorithms allowing Here capture, manipulate and play sound without any noticeable delay. "This is not just a small thing to Kickstarter, which can be worn on themselves", - said Lanman. At Doppler have plans for the next twenty years, where Dubs were just the first phase. Now comes phase two.

Listen! Listen! H4> The next phase includes the establishment, as it is called Lanman, «Google Street View, but sound." The Doppler want to map every concert venue, every street corner, every windy top of the mountain and offers automatic sound optimization. At the moment, everything is controlled manually. Maybe soon the world will sound better with Here. The company also wants to offer the musicians set up the equalizer for his speeches to make a sound engineer on the part of the responsibilities and enable them to create mixes with other i> artists. As you look at the opportunity to listen to the speech set Avicii Alesso?



Here now it is a niche product, but Doppler desperately want to create a device that you will never take off. Growing tension, including the two co-founders, who disagreed about the speed of advancement Doppler. Lanman wants to move quickly and make the device multifunctional.

According Lanman, we wear such a device 24 hours a day: "You do it, and at night and hear the sound of the surf, and your wife - do not. She could hear a baby crying when she nursed him, and you will not necessarily hear it. None of you are not necessarily hear the garbage truck. You wake up in the morning, listening to music and taking a phone call. " Lanman describes the whole day: the sounds of the office, too loud concerts, visits to bars where you could hardly hear each other. And yes, eventually the device will get a voice-controlled, automatic translator, as in the series Star Trek, and who knows what else.

All this will be later. Eventually Here will be better, smaller and more functional. Such is the nature of technology. Who Doppler is trying to make people understand the range of applicability of the device. "We want to see you first saw this device is not on the shelf at Best Buy, - says Kraft - we want anyone of you put them in the Coachella».

You can make a предзаказ on earplugs for $ 179, and after the official release they will cost $ 249. Doppler did not need the money, so they use Kickstarter as a platform for finding people who are close to the idea of ​​the bionic ear, and are not particularly concerned that the first version of the device will be a little more cumbersome than we would like. And even then, they hope to Doppler, they will attract fans festivals one after another.

The device is not for everyone - it is a large and strange-looking. Despite careful branding Doppler, you still feel strange when out of his ears stick out the white discs. But there is a market for it: the musicians or the hordes of hungry gadgets sponsors with Kickstarter.

When I had accumulated many doubts about Here, after the presentation but when I returned to the streets of San Francisco, I was like struck by lightning - I suddenly began to hear all the sounds: construction, machines, mobile phones and screams. Despite my skepticism, one thing I can say for sure: the world of sounds much nicer when my ears have Here.

Source: geektimes.ru/company/audiomania/blog/252562/