As most of you Braniacs already know, noise-canceling headphones work by "listening" to ambient noise and generating waveforms that inversely match the noise.

Flash forward to the present. (Okay, this has nothing to do with time travel; I've just always wanted to write "Flash forward to the present" here.) Many people with incurably snoring partners avoid earplugs because they worry they won't hear important noises—smoke alarms, kids calling, burglars breaking in, emergency phonecalls, ETs landing in the backyard, etc.

Snore-Canceling Earplugs are miniaturized noise-canceling devices optimized to cancel the types of sound patterns produced by undirected vibrating human respiratory structures. These patterns have specific, identifiable characteristics (because, prior to developing the actual algorithms, I'm saying they do).

For maximum comfort whilst sleeping, SCEs are custom- molded to each user's ear canals, like the custom protective earplugs worn by performing artists who can't use visible sound-blocking devices.

Now watch someone patent, manufacture and sell this and make a zillion bucks. Don't you hate it when that happens?
-- Ander, Apr 12 2016

Hmm, one alternate way to make these might be to invert the concept. Creating a sound to cancel continuous snoring will take a lot of energy. If these molded earplugs can block most of the sound passively, they would use less power. Then they could also perform more processing on other sounds, even allowing a slight delay before reproducing any sounds identified as not snoring. Be sure to test them every night by talking to your spouse and laughing a the mismatch between their moving lips and the sound you hear.
-- scad mientist, Apr 12 2016



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