I got a new pair of ANC headphones, Sony XM4's. They have a neat feature called Speak to Chat, which detects your voice if you start speaking and automatically pauses your audio. It's useful, for instance, if someone approaches you don't have to have a spare hand to pause your audio. Just say "hey" and it pauses automatically, and then it actually ENHANCES the sound of human voices piped into your ears.

So I got to thinking, this would be awesome for car audio. Blast your music as loud as you want, but certain key sounds would be programmed to automatically pause and enhance outside audio, such as car horns, emergency vehicle sirens, etc.

Well, that's it.
-- 21 Quest, Mar 15 2021

+a bun for anything that lets me blast my car stereo as loud as i want ( need ) to!
-- xandram, Mar 15 2021


As soon as I read “headphones”, I flicked open the croissants container.
-- xenzag, Mar 15 2021


[+] Somehow very relieved this was not about the African National Congress.
-- pertinax, Mar 15 2021


//It's useful, for instance, if someone approaches you don't have to have a spare hand to pause your audio.//

As someone who does long sessions of sterile (& dull) cell culture punctuated by someone coming to ask questions every 20mins or so, this is a feature I didn't know I needed... thanks!
-- bs0u0155, Mar 16 2021


Easy to do with headphones. Hard to do with open- room soundwaves and heads that are in varying locations.
-- RayfordSteele, Mar 22 2021


A great way to make car horns even more annoying - now they pause your music.
-- Worldgineer, Mar 22 2021



random, halfbakery