South Jersey Audio Tech Startup Melds What You Need To Hear With What You Want To Hear
by KYW tech editor Ian Bush
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Changing the way you hear the world around you: that's the aim of a South Jersey startup which has been showing off its audio innovations this past week at the CES electronics show in Las Vegas.
You're at work, earbuds in.
"You want to be able to hear your co-workers as they're talking around you but you still want to be able to listen to your music," says Joel Sackett, vice president at Stages.
What a quandary.
With Hero headphones made by the Ewing, Mercer County company, "you can set the headphones to mix in the ambient sound so you're still hearing the office chatter but you're still listening to music at the same time," Sackett explains.
What's more, it has keyword-recognition technology.
"For example, someone comes up behind you and says, 'hey, Ian.' If 'hey, Ian' is one of your keywords, we will lock onto that sound signal and you will hear what your co-worker is saying," Sackett says. "When they stop talking, the sound will go away."
It does the same for voices -- say, if you want to block out your co-workers but not the boss.
"We can recognize the sound of their voice and allow sound in when they talk, but not when someone else talks," Sackett says.
It's also designed to ease the transition between real and virtual worlds.
"When folks are trying to immerse themselves in virtual reality, there can be a feeling of anxiety because they're closed off from their environment and unsure whether someone trying to talk to them or is coming up behind them," Sackett says. "With our technology, you can completely mitigate that and never feel isolated because you can either mix in your ambient environmental audio while using VR, or you can set up keywords and voice recognition to hear them without having to take off your headphones or disconnect from your VR headset."
Stages also makes a unit called Sidekick so you can bring your own headphones to the technology.
They're launching an Indegogo campaign this week.
