Commercials, Christmas/top 40 music, chatterboxes, all annoying. Especially after you've seen/heard the same thing over and over and over. Using the same technology that song identification services (soundhound, shazaam, etc.) use to tell you what song is playing, this device identifies learned sounds and cancels them out. Already heard that annoying beer commercial on the radio 20 times? Tag it on your smart phone and next time your discreet earbuds will cancel that audio pattern. Sick and tired of listening to jingle bell rock? Tag it once and never hear it again.

These filters can be confined temporally (eg. I want to hear Christmas music, but not before December 12th and not after the 25th). Can be used as blacklists or as whitelists (eg. I want to hear only the sound of my alarm clock in the morning and nothing else while sleeping).

This could also be adaptive by using voice print technology to block certain people after their voice has been learned by the system. Sick of that sports caster with the annoying voice and nothing important to say? Teach the system their voice and never hear it again. Whitelist your children and blacklist your mother in law.

This would be equally effective in airports, subways, train stations where the same announcer talks incessantly over the loudspeaker. Teach it your flight number and still hear which gate you leave from. Really the sky is the limit, and using a smartphone ensures that the software has a list of pertinent information against which to check what you should or shouldn't hear.
-- slackline, Jan 08 2012

12th is far too early. You should set it for Dec 24th through to Jan 5th.
-- pocmloc, Jan 09 2012


this has similiarities to my idea. In my case I imagine it being web enabled so you can follow someone elses suggestions of what not to listen to. and replace them with something you would rather.
-- lostmind, Jan 10 2012


@lostmind: that seems like a very good solution to a single point source of sound that you have control of.

My hope would be that you could be anywhere, bar, friend's house, etc and have the same noise cancellation even when you can't install a special box to do the screening for you.
-- slackline, Jan 10 2012



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