Music is practically inseparable from the human species; and with digitalized music came earphones, headphones and the rest. The along strolled noise cancelling head phones but that came with the peril of you not hearing anything else apart from what you were listening to – even when it mattered; like life or death kind of matter.
Don’t get me wrong, the uses of noise-cancelling headphones can hardly be overstated. It blocks out all forms of distraction when you’re listening to that jam you love so much. By distraction, I mean noise, any and every other song in the background, annoying people(we all have those in our everyday lives). But on the flip side, it could also prevent you from hearing that friend who is calling your name at the top of his lungs and has been doing so for probably the past twenty minutes trying to save you from falling into the ditch that’s in front of you but you’ve been completely oblivious to because you’ve been dabbing. Not to talk of the most dangerous one: not hearing the horn of that vehicle that came out of nowhere and you could have sworn it wasn’t there before you crossed a second ago. In essence, this thing is dangerous.
Well, Amazon has finally found a solution to that problem – at least theoretically (it means on paper). For you to really understand this, we have to understand how noise cancelling headphones work. I’ll try to be as non-technical as possible but when I can’t help it, please bear with me. Lets get to it then:
Noise cancelling headphones use microphones to pick up incoming sound on specific frequencies then they mute/tune out those frequencies couples with the fact that these headphones are mostly snuggly and the earcups, well… sit very close to your ear.
In this latest design, Amazon has found a way to unmute those frequencies when a particular sound or sounds are heard. For example, a siren wailing, a car horn, or even your own name – seriously. Here’s what their design looks like:
Well, for now, all this is hear say and sounds scifi until this thing is a real thing; they probably don’t have a working prototype yet; but, it is so much fun to hope, right?
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