ChatterBlocker — Block Distracting Speech at Work 204
An anonymous reader writes "ChatterBlocker is a PC program that uses digital audio technology to neutralize the sound of speech and other distractions so you can stay focused at work or elsewhere." Personally I just crank the tunes. Anyone know if this actually works or if it's a scam? Or is it just a white noise generator?
Free Speech? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Free Speech? (Score:5, Insightful)
One does not have an obligation to listen to everybody's use of free speech.
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Re:Free Speech? (Score:4, Funny)
No... (Score:2)
Re:Free Speech? (Score:4, Funny)
"Corporate accounts payable, Nina speaking. Just a moment..."
"Corporate accounts payable, Nina speaking. Just a moment..."
obvious (Score:5, Funny)
Can you hear what my mouth is saying? (Score:5, Funny)
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Earplugs (Score:5, Funny)
Cheaper too I'd suppose.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Earplugs (Score:5, Informative)
Also earplugs are generally better at blocking high frequency sounds, while earmuffs are better for the low freq noises (or vice versa, but I think I have it right). And you should wear both if things are going to be really loud.
Re:Earplugs and leet skillz! (Score:4, Interesting)
Laptops allow you to be anywhere and we know we can filter noise and information a lot better than is currently done (and with less effort than at least I expected) plus the human brain is perfect for multitasking. I wonder if this sort of thing is indeed the future of at least geekdom, maybe of office space in general?
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For me at least it partially just began with getting to the stage where I can type fully without watching the screen or the keyboard as a side effect of u
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Maybe I'm totally wrong but this has very little basis in terms of theory of evolution.
You ne
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Maybe I'm totally wrong but this has very little basis in terms of theory of evolution Well, Larry really screwed with evolution in that novel anyway, in the idea that we're descended from (alien) Pak. But in this case I'd cut some slack and assume the word
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Re:Earplugs (Score:5, Insightful)
I've found the best solution for me is a pair of headphones that seal pretty well, combined with music. The sealed headphones drop everything, so the music can be much quieter and still drown them out.
I'm actually thinking of picking up a pair of Shure E2C [amazon.com] earbuds for just this purpose. Has anyone got any experience with them? Will they do what I want?
Re:Earplugs (Score:4, Interesting)
1) You have to stick them WAY inside your ears to get the full effect. It feals like you're poking your brain stem.
2) They work incredibly well.
3) You'll suddenly discover how crappy your home and car speakers are, and how REALLY crappy normal headphones are.
If you're really serious, get a good set of musician ear-moldings. They'll fit the E2C earphones, IIRC, and they're much more comfortable from what I'm told.
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I find wearing ear moldings for more than a few hours a day irritates the insides of my ears.
Which is frustrating, because I do notice the benefits from my hearing aids. And I can take the batteries out if I want to stop listening to people
Re:Earplugs (Score:5, Informative)
As a general recommendation, I've found them to be OK sound quality and good build quality - the cable and connections are still in quite good condition even with regular use over the past 18 months. The E3c model came with a bunch of different "plugs". I find the gray soft rubber ones the most comfortable and best sound reduction, but the harder clear ones the easier to use (i.e. stay in your ears and keep clean). I don't know if the E2cs come with different plugs, I seem to recall that was one of the selling points for the E3cs. The E4cs were recommended to me as a better bass response, which at the time I didn't think was that big of a deal. I still think it might be better for my hearing to skip the louder bass, but that is one area where the E3cs are slightly lacking. The bass response is OK but never stands out (does not compare to even a low end set of good headphones imo).
Just as an aside, I've found that they are somewhat inappropriate for office use. With music playing they will basically silence anyone who might be talking to you directly, potentially even your phone ringing if it's not loud enough. I have a cheap set of normal over-the-ear headphones that do NOT cut out direct noise that I use when I'm in an office environment, that's always been good enough for me.
Re: EarPhones (Score:2, Insightful)
The problem is, "the distracting noise" consists of your Boss telling you to do stuff completely different from the "high priority" he gave you an hour ago.
Re:Earplugs (Score:4, Informative)
My problem with the E2C actually was that in combination with my Rio Carbon I could not turn the music volume down _low_ enough to be 100% comfortable all the time. I couldn't listen to rock music with them, for example, because I found it painfully loud. This is not a problem for most people, I'm told
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In the office environment there is really no doubt that they block *everything*. (Even telephones..... why do they put alarm bells on those things?). They score highly for comfort too, which is important i
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I always travel with earplugs (Score:2, Informative)
useless (Score:5, Funny)
screenshot for all those who don't download demo (Score:2)
Worst. Article. Ever. (Score:5, Insightful)
WOW. MINDBLOWING.
Re:Worst. Article. Ever. (Score:5, Insightful)
You have to admit it's quite ingenious.
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Pink noise sucks (Score:2)
We have this in our office on a PA system. It annoys the crap out of me. When the office is quite, it sounds like the HVAC is running. When there are people talking, I can still hear them, I just can't make out their words as clearly.
-Rick
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To me, these things are like people using a lot of perfume to cover up B.O. instad of bathing.
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-Rick
perfect (Score:5, Funny)
pure snakeoil (Score:5, Insightful)
Quote:
"ChatterBlocker includes bell sound loops that can be used as periodic reminders to breathe"
now, come on
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Pretty cool right? In version 2.0 upcoming:
- reminder to eat
- reminder to drink
- reminder to pee
- reminder to blink
the possibilies are endless
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From the site: (Score:2)
Right, I want to block out chattering voices with anti-chatter-voices! Brilliant!
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Am I going to buy it? Hrm. Doubtful.
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Maybe that could be a new KDE start-up sound? Quick, KDE! Get it before it shows up in vista!
http://www.google.com/search?q=tuvan+throat+singin g&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8 [google.com]
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe [google.com]
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A sound blocking technique that I use - in all seriousness - is some of the sound effects from Star Trek TOS. I ripped a few of them to ogg (I find the shuttle craft sound the most effective) and then run:
'mplayer -loop 0 Shuttle_Craft.ogg'
Actually, sometimes I distract myself adding the voices of Commodore Mendez and Captain Kirk debating Spock's fate
Something else (Score:2, Insightful)
People use to talk each other as an expession of being human for social relationshinps and for knowledge transfers.
But those employers could be more interested in bodies rather than in minds.
In this latter case, the software is very useful.
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Who said anything about employers? As an employee I'm interested in anything that cuts the noise level in my environment. Two days out of the week I'm in an office where the permanently-installed cube desk is right next to the server rack and the aircon unit, and since I'm IT support during class hours I'm supposed
Try the Demo! (Score:4, Insightful)
Why did'nt you try the demo? I did, and this stupid program does nothing more than generate sound. This way you have even more noise around you.
Really, worst article ever.
Article? (Score:3, Interesting)
hmmm... only item on 'news' page: "10/20/06 ChatterBlocker 1.0 was finally released!"
Slashvert?
Yes.
Speech Recognition (Score:2)
Uber-Parent Is Part of the Problem (Score:2, Insightful)
Good job, you boorish oaf. Now you've contributed to the problem, and your co-workers probably hate you. Or you're using headphones, and going deaf.
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Get a set of old-fashioned, fully enclosed, around-the-ear headphones. It blocks a lot of the outside noise, so you don't have to crank it as loud. And it keeps most of your own noise from escaping.
It used to be that anything short of the the hundred dollar + ones sounded awful. But there are now a few inexpensive ones [jr.com] that sound remarkably good.
You might be thinking, "Why not use a more modern and lighter weight noise cancelling headphone?". Two reasons: 1) more expe
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If you can get away with cranking up tunes on anything by headphones at your job, the rest of us can't. So your assumption is incorrect.
And how is going deaf contributing to the problem? I'd say it solves the problem pretty well, not to mention he didn't say he puts it so high as to go deaf... but anyway
if you wanna rant you can always find what to rant for.
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Well, it is CmdrTaco...
(I am so going to slashdot hell for that)
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Another useful feature (Score:2, Redundant)
Hardware version (Score:5, Funny)
Taco Taco Taco (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone who's taken even 15 seconds to look into this will instantly know the answer.
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Not reading the article is a public service here. Can you imagine how devastating the slashdot effect would be if EVERYONE read the articles???
Free advertizing? (Score:3, Insightful)
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I call bullshit.Slashdot article -very- misleading (Score:2)
Not a scam, but.... (Score:5, Interesting)
And there are those who have just the right irratating, cutting thru anything (even head phones blasting) voice sound, change in volume, starts to say something five different ways before they stumble it out, etc..that you just have to know ain't nobody going to custom create sounds to drown these unique voices out.
But this is not a scam as I'm sure it is capable of smoothing over common chatter. I think what helps me to believe this is that I saw some short clip on TV about movie sound effects. Ever notice that background murmer of people talking in a scene where there are lots of people but you really only hear the actors in focus? This is only one example, but there is at least one company that does nothing but deal with teh talent that is hired for these background effects.
My reasoning is that if you can create such chatter that is not so distracting, you probably have a good idea as to what is distracting and that should make for a good start at address the problem,
Now if you check out the site, you'll see they are far from being new to the sound industry.
It may not work as well as you like against those uniquly distracting voices but for alot of offices it probably would help.
As to mind focusing sounds, this is also been researched. I myself sometimes listed to Yani to help life my mental state and I read something where during the playing of some mathmatically/logically correct classical piece (bach or batoveen sp?) it is difficult to lie.
I suppose the trick is to take the distracting noice and add such pleasing noise to the mmix that blends the distraction into the acceptable.
I've noticed some music works better than other at drowning out specific office noise.
Someone saw me with head phones on and ask: Rocking Out? I said: No! Drowning out....
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But it's never truly silent, is it? In my office right now it's three things: Outdoor construction noises, the ventilation system, and my AMD machine plus G5 mac. As far as what bothers me the most: I have sent back hard drives that put out a high pitched whine (10K RPM ones seem to be the worst) even though they were not defective. With those drives I can slowly feel my high frequency hearing melting away. I've gravitated towards the Seagate Ba
Crank the tunes: no good (Score:3, Interesting)
What I'd need to improve my concentration in a chattery environment, I guess is a constant background noise which is ignorable yet chatter blends into.
But then, since I choose not to work from home because the chatter is condusive to productivity, I don't need it.
Noise Cancelling headphones (Score:2)
http://www.epinions.com/content_178219683460 [epinions.com]
set my music low and I can get some work done. Yeah, these aren't the fancy Bose $300 headphones but Wal Mart (used?) sells them for less than $30 and the DO work. They're light, (the noise cancelling stuff is mid-cord, not in the phones themselves), well padded, comfortable to wear for hours and if
Perfect for anybody taking tech support calls... (Score:2)
In the old days... (Score:2, Funny)
Developer's reply (Score:5, Informative)
It's obvious from your feedback that we did not make this clear enough. We discuss this in detail on our FAQ page, in the "More Info" page and in our white papers, but we have now added additional clarification to our home page. I thought I was doing a good thing by taking off my engineering hat and putting on my marketing hat, focusing on the benefits not the technology, but obviously this has derailed the discussion toward the topic of noise cancellation.
Our testers felt the program was useful for masking unwanted conversations, and less distracting than listening to pop music. If you're interested, give the demo a try. We welcome your feedback.
Earl Vickers
The Sound Guy, Inc.
http://chatterblocker.com
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Unwanted information (Score:3, Interesting)
Speech is very much the same thing. If we can hear conversations, even just partial bits here and there, our brains will immediately work at translating the speech into thought.
So on one hand, I can understand how simply covering those frequencies with sounds that don't sound like speech could alleviate some distraction (assuming the sound it admits isn't blatantly annoying). During that movie if the subtitled text was replaced by white noise / static, I at least wouldn't have been trying to make sense of the extraneous information.
Dan East
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Then there is this thing called lateral inhibition. The closer two tasks are, the easier it is to get into conflict. Watching TV and listening the sound of the TV in the same time is ok, listening to the sound and reading the subtitles is a bit harder, listening/watching two TVs or reading two texts impossible.
So whe
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My solution ... (Score:2)
Free version at this link (Score:2, Informative)
A couple of better ideas (Score:2, Informative)
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Does ChatterBlocker use noise cancellation?
No. Noise cancellation would not be effective over speakers, and noise cancelling headphones have limited effectiveness in silencing voice.
Good quality noise cancelling headphones are great for reducing low-frequency sounds, such as airplane engine rumble, but they are not as effective in the 2 to 8 kHz consonant range that conveys much of the speech intelligibility.
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In a previous life, I had to travel a lot, and used a set of noise-cancelling headphones. They do work pretty well, as the FAQ says. When they don't work too well, the issue isn't really frequency per se; in principle, they could perfectly cancel a constant-amplitude 10 kHz si
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Re:Noise cacellation? (Score:4, Funny)
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I work in pro audio. My audio interface is set to a latency of 10ms, and can be set even lower. Extremely low latency is necessary for professional work with audio. Given the relatively simple phase-inversion necessary to create a noise-cancellation effect, there's absolutely
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Wow talk about everybody jumping down my throat...I'll respond to you since you're the one person who didn't post as an Anonymous Coward.
Anyway, my mistake...I misread microseconds as milliseconds. It was early on a Sunday, and I wasn't really paying all that much attention. So, yes, you are correct. And you're probably correct that 10ms isn't fast enough to work well for noise cancellation. I'm somewhat doubtful that thos
Re:Noise cacellation? (Score:4, Interesting)
It seems that nobody in this thread understands the problems with noise cancellation. Of course it is trivial to build an analog circuit that substracts the signal from a small microphone from the signal that goes to the headphone speaker. Unfortunately, that won't work. The problem is that a headphone typically has a very complicated frequency response resulting from the resonances in de closed volume between the eardrum and the headphone loudspeaker, and the attempts of the headphone designer to compensate for these resonances. (see for example here [soundstageav.com]). The net effect is that the impulse response of the headphone/ear system with respect to electrical signals going into the speaker is about 1.5 ms. That means that even if you have full knowledge of the interaction of the headphone with a particular ear, you need to know what sound wave to cancel 1.5 milliseconds in advance. In this time, the sound can travel about 50 cm, which is obviously more than the 1-2 cm between the headphone speaker and the microphone.
So to make an effective noise-cancellating headphone, you have to compromise on sound quality in order to give it a quicker impulse response. Then you will have to accept that you will never be able to effectively cancel out high frequencies (above 1 kHz or so). Finally, you will still need to build some kind of lowpass filter such that you won't substract the higher frequencies with the wrong phase and thus increase the noise rather than decrease it. With all these constraints, you can be happy if you achieve 10 dB reduction.
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Re:Er,,, (Score:4, Informative)
They work well for sounds that are continuous, such as the hum of a refrigerator, but are rather ineffective against speech or other rapidly changing audio signals.
Noise cancellation requires hardware. Headphones use microphones to pick up the sounds which are then cancelled by phase-inversion [headwize.com]. It gets vastly more complex when dealing with open spaces. This is nothing that software alone has a solution for.
Software can't do anything at all on its own (Score:2)
Standard audio I/O still not enough (Score:3, Informative)
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RTFA (Score:5, Informative)
So i guess the way it works is by making sounds that blend with other background noises, but aren't as annoying (in theory).
Scaling? (Score:2)
Hmm...