New earpiece design puts a microphone inside your head

Finally, you no longer have to mess with annoying bone conducting headsets to get your message heard in noisy environments. A Japanese company called NS-ELEX has created a new type of earpiece / microphone called the "e-Mimi-kun" (good ear boy), which utilizes air vibrations in the ear to deliver your voice to the other end of the line. Apparently, the design reduces outside noise by a factor of six, and a Sanyo chip used in the device further reduces sound levels, making things up to ten times quieter. The earpiece can be tethered to a phone, or work wirelessly via Bluetooth. No release date or pricing info available right now, but we're pretty sure stock brokers will snap these up like hot-cakes.

[Via PhysOrg]

[Jonathan Bergeron @ Dec 18th 2007 10:37AM]

What I want to know is, will my voice sound like my actual voice or will it sound like a computer? Because vocal cords are what make the distinct sound of each person's voice, air vibrations may not be able to pick those nuances up.

[Chris @ Dec 18th 2007 10:45AM]

How do you think normal microphones work if not for "air vibrations"?

[UKNigel @ Dec 18th 2007 11:42AM]

Magic of course.

[Wwhat @ Dec 18th 2007 11:52AM]

I think it's a valid point, albeit put a bit awkward, how can your voice sound natural after being electronically decoded/deduced from the vibrations of your skull and air in your ear.
Does that work?

[Tommy @ Dec 18th 2007 10:48AM]

Isn't this old news again? Motorola has had their miniblue Bluetooth headset that "picks up your voice through the ear canal".

http://www.motorola.com/mediacenter/news/detail.jsp?globalObjectId=6264_6219_23

How is this any different?

[Jonathan Sundy @ Dec 18th 2007 2:58PM]

It can't be the same tech.

According to all the reviews on amazon (http://www.amazon.com/review/product/B000EF3D4G/ref=cm_rdphist_1?%5Fencoding=UTF8&filterBy=addOneStar)
the sound quality on the H9 was HORRIBLE.

So something has to be different and noteworthy. What really confused me was people mentioning background noise and wind issues, meaning the mic can't be in the hear on the H9.
You got me all excited too.....

[Eric @ Dec 18th 2007 10:56AM]

I had something from Jabra years ago. It worked like crap.

[Jonathan Sundy @ Dec 18th 2007 10:59AM]

Not just stock brokers, but people with convertibles too.

I've been desperately waiting for a bluetooth headset that eliminates wind noise so I can finally have a headset again :/

Invisio or something was supposed to come out with one last Christmas (and sell it at RadioShack) and nothing ever came of it.

I was thinking about trying the jawbone but I've heard such mixed details on how it works (some people say it has 2 mic's to determine what is noise and what to keep, others say it's 1 mic and a bone conduction piece to help filter out noise) and I hear it doesn't really help with wind noise.

[N. @ Dec 18th 2007 1:43PM]

Doesn't really help with wind noise, but it is pretty good.

I believe it has 1 mic for your voice, 1 mic to detect outside noise, and then uses a little nubby to determine when you're moving your jaw/talking (and thus when it needs to filter out the outside noise).

[Mako @ Dec 18th 2007 11:07AM]

I used to have one of those Jabra ones from years ago and it seemed to work fine for me. Maybe I just have more air in my head. =)

In any case, it is hardly anything new.

[zed @ Dec 18th 2007 11:09AM]

USER MANUAL:
Take the wax out of your ears or else you will sound like kermit the frog...

[Laith @ Dec 18th 2007 11:20AM]

This sort of thing has been available for years. When I was younger Radio Shack had one of their cheap toy walky-talky sets that used exactly this method to pickup the voice.

[Porter @ Dec 18th 2007 12:46PM]

Good, now the voices in my head can be empirically verified.

[Wwhat @ Dec 18th 2007 12:55PM]

The NSA better starts thinking up excuses then.

[Tony Colonello @ Dec 18th 2007 12:57PM]

Like all the others have been saying... NOTHING NEW.

The military has been working on this since the 1960s or maybe earlier.

Civilian pilots have been able to buy the same type of system since the 1980s.

But sometimes I still look fondly on a tin can and a ball of twine.

[jms @ Dec 18th 2007 1:05PM]

Along those lines of thought, the Intel Core 2 Duo is NOTHING NEW because computers have been around for over 40 years.

[Jonathan Sundy @ Dec 18th 2007 3:00PM]

Please post links to other bluetooth headsets that use this technology so I can use one.

I mean don't claim some as OFN without atleast justifying your claims that other products exists just like it.

Atleast Tommy compared it to an existing product.

[Dr Buzz0 @ Dec 18th 2007 3:55PM]

Is it really that hard to just drill a small discrete hole into the cranium? I mean I have a nice set of titanium drill bits that ought to cut through the scull no problem. The hole size I guess depends on how big a microphone you want to stick in there. If anyone is interested I'll do it cheap and even putty up the hole afterward and smooth it over with some spackle.

[Andy @ Dec 18th 2007 4:33PM]

Might be a good mic for stage productions if it sounds decent...

[Tony Colonello @ Dec 18th 2007 5:36PM]

Since you asked here is a patent from 1994:
http://www.wipo.int/pctdb/en/wo.jsp?WO=1994%2F06255&IA=WO1994%2F06255&DISPLAY=STATUS
A technical paper from the Naval school from 2004:
http://www.stormingmedia.us/95/9545/A954544.html
And a model for private pilots:
http://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalog/avpages/millenium.php

This is not new technology. They just slapped bluetooth on it. It is like calling the touchscreen in an iPhone new technology. The technology has been round for years Apple just put it to a fancy new use.

And I do not consider the Core 2 Duo a new technology. It is an improvement of existing technology. When computers went from tubes to transistors (early 1960s) and then to integrated circuits (mid 1970s) those were new technologies. But even today were are still using the von Neumann architecture from the 1950s.

[Bobs @ Dec 18th 2007 7:41PM]

The addition of bluetooth is an improvment.

[AaronS @ Dec 29th 2007 8:21PM]

The earmic is an industry first in that it is a 2-way unit. most of these in the past have had two separate functions--a speaker and a microphone. This is a two speaker/microphone. I was told by Japanese reporters that they have seen this in consumer use only when the two are separated. This is an industry first in Japan.

Having seen the demonstration of the product myself, I have to say that it sounds pretty good. It is not going to be cheap either--like $380 for the wired, and $570 for the wireless.