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A better Bluetooth headset?
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By Jørgen Sundgot, Wednesday 15 January 2003  
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Sound ID has introduced the world's first Bluetooth headset which not only acts as a wireless hands-free, but also lets users personalize sound for better hearing.
Albeit the sizes and shapes of Bluetooth - and other wireless - headsets vary, as do the technology they use, few companies think radically different when it comes to improving the already existing template. One of these companies is Sound ID, which has come up with what the company has dubbed Personalized Digital Sound - a sound signal processing technology which the company says can enhance a user's listening experience through personalizing sound.
 | The first product to use Sound ID's new Personalized Digital Sound concept is its own PSS Bluetooth headset
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The first Personalized-sound product, a Bluetooth headset called the Personal Sound System (PSS), was recently demonstrated at the 2003 International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
According to Sound ID, Personalized Digital Sound increases speech intelligibility and the quality of sound for all listeners through Personalization and Adaptive Noise Compensation. Based on the fact that everybody hears differently and that throughout our lives, progressive hearing changes make it more difficult to hear in challenging (or noisy) situations and even in quiet, Sound ID's personalization of sound uses the signal processing embedded on the DSP of the PSS to tune incoming sound to an individual's personal hearing profile, accommodating for hearing changes that limit the perception of sound.
To create a hearing profile, Sound ID has developed the proprietary EarPrint hearing evaluation system, an Internet-based system which the company says can establish your hearing profile in minutes. At the conclusion of the EarPrint evaluation, the user's profile is automatically transferred to the Personal Sound System, where he or she can choose to store their profile for future use. The Personal Sound System then uses this profile to adjust its signal processing to maximize the intelligibility of the mobile phone signal to the user.
The second technology being used in the PSS, in addition to personalization, is Adaptive Noise Compensation which complements the personalization feature. To compensate for the interference of background noise, ANC constantly analyzes environmental noise and attempts to adapt the audio signal to optimize the clarity, intelligibility and comfortable loudness of speech for every listener as noise that surrounds the listener changes.
This method of adjusting the audio signal to background noise is different from solutions that try to block or cancel out background noise, according to Sound ID. Adaptive Noise Compensation adapts the person's voice on the other end of a phone call, to preserve clarity for the Personal Sound System wearer in noisy environments. The background noise is unchanged, but the intention is for the PSS wearer to hear more clearly due to the sound output of the PSS being adapted to compensate for the noise.
As for the Personal Sound System itself, the headset offers 3 to 4 hours of talk time and 70 hours of standby time, and weighs in at 11 g. Availability is slated for the end of March of 2003, while units can be pre-ordered now through Sound ID's website.
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