On 12/11/2015 10:58 AM, Muggles wrote:
On 12/11/2015 11:10 AM, Don Y wrote:
On 12/11/2015 3:03 AM, Uncle Monster wrote:

I much prefer real headphones (Sennheiser, Koss) unless I'm walking. For
earbuds, I have over-the-ear mounts that don't need to be WEDGED into
the
ear canal. But, when seated at my workstations, the cord gets in the
way
(physically) as well as limiting my range of motion (there's no place
where it can be plugged in that will still give me 270 degrees of motion
in my chair)

I actually hear a pretty good bass reproduction out of the Bluetooth
headset
I have but there is another larger one that covers the ears and looks
like
it came from the same manufacturer. I've thought about purchasing those
because I can get better isolation from the noise around me. Sometimes it
can get as noisy as a grammar school playground around here. I
actually wore
out a pair of musician's sound isolation headphones that have a 15
foot cord
but cord length made them a bit awkward to use when sitting in front of a
laptop. (€¢€¿€¢)

Headphones have conflicting goals.

In some cases, you want them to give you a completely private, controlled
listening environment. This prevents extraneous noises from interfering
with the source material for a "better" listening experience.

But, it also isolates you from the ambient sounds in your environment.
E.g., someone approaching you from behind has to tap you on the shoulder
in order to get your attention (as you can't HEAR what they are trying to
say to you).

To solve this problem, you have to let external sounds in along with the
source material -- which deprives you of that private environment. It
*also* means others nearby tend to "overhear" that source material!

What you ideally want is something that mixes the two sources (the
program material plus the ambient) "intelligently". E.g., speaking
while wearing sound-isolating headphones tends to result in talking
louder than normal -- as you don't have the same level of feedback
that you do with an uncovered head. Mixing your speech into the
signal delivered to your ears can result in more "normal" speaking
patterns/volumes -- this is one of the benefits of sidetone in a
telephone.

Likewise, mixing in the ambient sounds -- at a level YOU consider
appropriate -- lets you remain connected to your environment
instead of listening in an "isolation chamber".

Maybe you could design better hearing aids?

I'm primarily interested in addressing less well served populations:
visually impaired, physically handicapped. Most "devices" nowadays
interact with people visually (so hearing-impaired is not at a loss
to use them!) and with some degree of manual dexterity.

Folks who can't see and/or are largely immobile are effectively
deprived access to those devices and systems.

To put it in perspective, imagine your smart phone had NO (visual)
display. What would it be like to use it -- sighted?