Testing My Speech Jammer In Public

[@sustomusickillsyoutube]

What have we definitely learned, here? That no matter the circumstances, human beings are always capable of yelling "Fuck"

[@friedmandesigns]

Pretty old neural pathways have been forged globally around that word in multiple cultures. Powerful stuff! :)

[@bobbler42]

“Not being used for evil”…I reckon five years to noise marine.

[@hugegamer5988]

@@bobbler42 yea, imagine personalized unskippable ads pumped directly into your skull, even in noisy areas.

[@ChrisThomasBone]

Fun fact, unlike most of your spoken vocabulary, swear words are remembered in the part of your brain responsible for emotional reactions

[@laptoples]

Hahahahahahaha That made me laugh out loud !!! Hehehehehehe

[@Emily_M81]

Benn has started his supervillain arc. They finally pushed him too far.

[@Scanlaid]

He needs a whole set of corny flashbulb one-liners. Ha HAH! Flash photography please! I'll just LIGHTen this bank vault! Blink and you'll miss me! WAAA HA HAAAA

[@tuxedo1557]

@@Scanlaid 😂

[@adisaikkonen]

We can blame spotify for this

[@ocnb]

It's ok, Keegan will save us from Benn!

[@artisan002]

Darth Flashbulb... He's actually the worst of the Sith Lords, because he inherently disrupts EVERYone else's monologues.

[@MicroAppleStudios]

The trick with the speech jammer, is to be sure and firm with your choice of words and to not let yourself be concerned with how you sound. Most get tongue tied because they can hear themselves and try to adjust their speaking voice while focusing on the jammer voice.

[@wizardsuth]

The same approach works with tongue twisters. If you focus on the meaning of the words without being concerned about how they sound you can talk about toy boats, rubber baby buggy bumpers, tweedle beetle paddle battles, and the sixth sheik's sick sixth sheep all day.

[@vahgarimo9864]

@@wizardsuth Isn't the reason tongue twisters are difficult to say is not that they sound weird, but because they are quite literally twisting your tongue in difficult ways, and generally require training or experience to learn? I don't really understand why focusing on the meaning of the words would help, could you explain?

[@Starkillr1]

i think the trick is not having a tranny in your video.

[@All.Natural.Dirt.]

​@@vahgarimo9864I think people get tripped up because they hear themselves and try to correct a minor mistake instead of continuing the sentence and it just snowballs into chaos

[@arandomsupra]

Maybe thats why mainly musicians were affected

[@iLostHurley755]

They use this technology at the Vegas Sphere theater. Specifically for different languages so you can be hearing it in English and the person next to you can be listening in another language and neither of you can hear the other’s audio. Absolutely amazing tech.

[@Thebolfster]

Imagine doing that except like making one guy hear like something psychotic just advocating murder , and everyone is just like cheering

[@Arkhaan_]

@@Thebolfster I like the way you think

[@fica1137]

​@@Thebolfsteryou start hearing numbers

[@alicorn3924]

​@@fica1137 WHAT DO THE NUMBERS MEAN, MASON THE NUMBERS MASON

[@JK-gm6kk]

HELTER SKELTER RACE WAR PIGGIES NIGHTMARE NIGHTMARE ​@@Thebolfster

[@projectdren806]

You can train yourself to tune out the background voice. Source: I worked at an ATT call center for years and OFTEN people would call while on speaker phone and their volume loud. This produced the delay effect and it 100% trips people up for a couple weeks. After that your brain learns to phase it out.

[@vapormissile]

Sad & comforting. Stuff like that is why I'm nice to spam calls now. I tell them they are good people.

[@thereoc]

@@vapormissileGaslighting is crazy

[@mikemondano3624]

Not the same at all.

[@sarahmccollum3694]

@projectdren806 I too work in a call center selling directv to previous dtv customers and its worse, because if they don't immediately hang up you, you're hearing everything they have going on in the background, and they'll find ways to try to blow out your eardrums. The trick is to focus on the purpose of your call and to not be thrown off for anything. It never stops, but it does get easier to train your brain to tune out those undesired frequencies. Often, you hear things you might not understand, but it's better to just work through it and keep control.

[@Noot-dt6ou]

About a decade ago there were DAF apps that people would play with and i learned pretty quickly to turn off the 'listening' part of my brain while speaking. Came in handy when i got more into video games where mic echo can be a problem.

[@Luvutoo]

I've heard a story that an engineer started delaying monitors when a stage crashed tried to steal the mic to bring up their own agenda. The delay was so disorienting the intruder got off the mic

[@Hypershiftmediajake]

I was an audio engineer this is so funny to me lol. It feels impossible to speak when u can hear urself on a slight delay, you can retrain your brain to ignore it and be abke to speak but its still disorientating

[@garrettpi]

what do you even mean... I don't understand

[@jonasharp3]

⁠@@garrettpirandom guy hopped on stage and started talking on the mic, the engineer set the mic to a delay so the guy would hear himself after actually speaking.

[@turolretar]

that’s genius

[@johntowers1213]

its like when you hear your self talking on the other end of a phone line but with a small delay due to the time it take for the speaker on the other phone to broadcast your words which is then picked up by that phones microphone and fed back to you slightly delayed.. it can completely knock your concentration causing you to trip up over your words as your brain struggles to deal with the "echo" of whats being said as your saying it.. @@garrettpi

[@kylemccombmusic]

This would make such a cool interactive museum piece, imagine a microphone at a podium with the sound laser directly overhead

[@ssatva]

Back in... I think the early 80s? the Pacific Science Center in Seattle WA had a sort of phone booth labeled "the machine can stop you from talking". It was far less sophisticated, it used a phone booth style phone you held up to your ear and spoke into, but it was hilariously hard to read the passage that explained it out loud when you were in the booth. And I think folks outside could toggle between hearing just the speaker, or hearing both the speaker and the delay. I think it was part of an exhibit on the senses, but it stuck around for a while as it was a lot of fun.

[@Fredfredfredfredfredfredfred]

Have you ever seen those chairs that face each other and they’re shaped to sit across from someone and talk normally, but they reflect the sounds to each other? Digital that

[@yeshuayeeyee7430]

live listen on iphone works just as good with airpods@@ssatva

[@Octamed]

Sounds perfect for "Look Mum No Computer"s muesum

[@codaman127]

Ah yes, imagine yelling into something like that.

[@watchreadplayretro]

I cannot even concentrate when my bluetooth headphones are half a second out of sync with your lips, so reading to your speech jammer surely would be impossible. fantastic stuff, great channel, enjoying so much here, cheers!

[@MichaelChin1994]

I feel like I'd fail the challenge without the jammer

[@jfireclimbing]

Yeah, I'm curious how many of these people would have messed up anyway!

[@Mr_Yod]

Me too, so maybe with the jammer I would become better. =)

[@atomictraveller]

you think you're funny but all those guys should worship me like a god i'm xoxos the dsp king. using a short delay to slap the speaker's voice back at them into a pair of headphones to see if they could focus was a theatre technique used in the eighties. i have absolutely no issue focusing on what i;m saying. i can also hear things and code thnigs that you wouldn't even dream of or benn or any of those other guys because they;r enot xoxos but do they ask xoxos? no they just harvest attention and tell people stupid stuff while you play along being happy with fail. just punch them in the face holmes. it's sad that no one else is even slightly close slightly to how amazing i am compared to them.

[@mariovilas4176]

Same here

[@vapormissile]

Now I'm having trouble thinking abut eat

[@DelTashlin]

As an ex actor who has had to recite lines from memory while having a fever, a twisted ankle, clogged ears, etc; I would love to know if that experience and ability would combat your sonic pressure. Also, pointing it at a singer while singing would also be intriguing.

[@HadSomeTea]

I cant speak even when hearing my voice with delay, so you probably can try if simple delay will afect you

[@tompw3141]

Singers learn not to listen to echos (because you try and sing in time with them, and get behind)

[@mattmarzula]

Considering most people couldn't read through that paragraph out loud to begin with, having some reps in recitation in public would provide an advantage.

[@traskforge]

point it at joe biden

[@DJProtaganist]

Had a bad stuttering problem when I was younger and still stall now. I want to see how it would effect that.

[@alexgrunde6682]

Back when I worked a call center job, the delayed feedback thing would sometimes happen with people on speaker phone. I had to perfect the art of ignoring anything my ears were hearing in order to be able to speak when it happened.

[@supplement420]

"Ignoring anything" That explains why you call again when someone says don't call again, or gets send a contract even tho he said No on the phone.

[@RegebroRepairs]

Yup. I imagine that helps.

[@ElRabito]

​@@Anthony-sm5omThere is no God you sheep.

[@alexgrunde6682]

@@supplement420 In my defense it was a customer service call center, not an up-selling timeshares call center.

[@sirflimflam]

The only way I can deal with phone delayed feedback is if I pull my ear from the phone and talk, then listen for a response. It's literally impossible for me to speak and hear myself come back with a delay. I shut down completely, I don't even stutter, I just can't talk anymore.

[@omegadragons321]

istg an invisible version of this exists 1 foot away from me 24/7

[@Dualspeedbattler1]

And I make sure it always stays there, and sometimes take it back for repairs and sometimes upgrades

[@undecimus5554]

Poor omegadragons slow

[@MoosesValley]

I knew a guy (he was a customer that sometimes visit a business I ran) who would repeat everything you said as you were speaking - in real time, with a slight delay. He would guess / mumble what word you were saying next and then correct himself as he figured out the word. It was extremely hard to speak with this guy close by - most people would just stop talking. I have demonstrated what he did to many friends and work colleagues, and while I am nowhere near as good as the mirror speak as this guy was, they have all been stopped in their tracks and unable to speak further.

[@beefchicken]

I have a friend that does this, but he can usually control himself so that it’s just his lips moving. Sometimes he’ll slip up and voice the last few words of the other persons sentence.

[@JaakkoF]

Any particular reason why a person repeats everything said to them?

[@MoosesValley]

@@JaakkoF Great question ! I could speculate on him being nervous, but it is more than that ... I will ask him if / when I see him again.

[@beefchicken]

@@JaakkoF it’s called Echolalia. There’s a good Wikipedia article on the subject. It often occurs with people with autism spectrum disorder or Tourette’s.

[@helpyousleep7386]

@@beefchicken the old..... spectrum, that didnt exist when i was a kid in the 70s, now its used to explain both the god and bad people do...

[@cmerr2]

Are you really the guy who invented this?? Thank you for helping me ace every college speech I ever gave. Seriously I crushed all of them - I was the best speaker in any class I took and it wasn't close. I saw your "speech jammer" when I was in college. I don't have the skills or ability to make one - but I looked into it. Someone somewhere (I think the creator was japanese) wrote a program that you can download to your computer that works on the same principle. You speak into your computer microphone and your voice comes out of your headphones on a delay you control. I used this program whenever I had to give a speech in school. I still use this technique for business presentations today. All you do is plan what you want to present, practice, and when you think you're ready - turn on the speech jammer and run it again. As your video showed - it's possible to get through it, but you have to be EXTREMELY confident. It's elevated my speaking skills a ton! Thanks again - Subscribed!

[@joostfloot5279]

Interesting method!

[@bluemountain8110]

What was the program called

[@MrClean-ep7uc]

yeah what was the program called? Where is the device found?

[@ElelusivebudgieNor]

id like to know too

[@deejay7339]

He didn't invent this it has existed for couple decades

[@windrider970]

I think this also works if you DON'T hear yourself. I often have to attend group calls for my work using Slack, and since I work from home, I use noise cancelling earphones. But they're so good at blocking sound that I can't hear myself speaking, so I have to take it out from one ear during calls so I can speak coherently.

[@MeatCatCheesyBlaster]

Yes that's why deaf people talk weird

[@myfatassdick]

@@MeatCatCheesyBlasterwell I mean also the fact they never correctly heard how to pronounce words

[@alexmckee4683]

Interesting. I use noise cancelling headphones all day long and have three hours of meetings and calls per day wearing them. I find it very helpful to not hear myself talking, and I know from recordings of the meetings that I continue to speak fluently and articulately. I am am definitely prone to sonic interference though, when I hear myself through someone else's microphone on the call I find it difficult to speak as articulately. I have once or twice needed to ask everyone to go on mute to counter such interference.

[@py_a_thon]

DJ's use the same tactic. They dont wear headphones on only one ear because it looks cool (although some maybe do). The idea is similar to other music forms where you need to have separation of functions. For drums, that would be limb separation (as in, each limb can act mostly independent of all other limbs). For some musicians such as pianists or stringed instrument players, it is digit separation (fingers/toes) && limb separation concepts. For dj's, that related neurological function is apparently audio/auditory separation. They have a song in one ear and a song from the house speakers. Then they mix the 2 songs together or translate into a new song, with an interlude or drop or whatever. If ya'll gonna talk about the acoustic sciences, then apparently I am going to mention music lol.

[@BodywiseMustard]

​@@MeatCatCheesyBlasterweirdly*

[@Catto_Ninja]

A cartoon villain would 100% create something like this, I can already see a platypus with a brown hat trying to track you down. Take care around platypuses man.

[@soumilghosh5156]

*coughs Doofenshmirtzly*

[@megadroidpower5428]

acutally their Platapie NOT Platapussies BUT that doesnt remove the phallic or Sexual Innuendo from them.

[@shaft9000]

Talk about a counter-game-breaker... heh. A D&D GM could hand-wave this into their campaign as a useable artifact/magic item : _"Silence the Wizzzzard!!!"_

[@luke6266]

This is super cool! One note: Tartini tones are a psychoacoustic effect, but the audible sound generated by the speaker (called a parametric array) is physical. By that I mean the audible frequencies from the speaker are actually present in the sound wave rather than being "produced" by our brain. The effect here is instead called "generation of sound by ultrasound," and it only happens for very high pressure sound waves (nonlinear acoustic waves), which in this case are the ultrasonic carrier waves, which is why the transducers draw so much current. The interaction itself, the audible sound, is relatively weak because it's generated by the air in front of the speakers, not the speakers themselves.

[@RobotsEverywhereVideos]

hit a glass pane with it and it'll be a lot louder (and not necessarily break the glass surprising)

[@imstupid880]

Huzzah! Hope he sees this.

[@whcw11]

Excuse my ignorance, but why is the ultrasound part necessary? Is it to make the sound more directionally focused?

[@RobotsEverywhereVideos]

@@whcw11 yes

[@whcw11]

@@RobotsEverywhereVideos cool, thanks!

[@MortenBN1988]

It is possible to train your yourself to deal with the delay of your own voice. In the military, the vehicle headsets in some of our armored vehicles (for intercom and radio) would have a delayed feedback. It's pretty stressful to have to deal with that while communicating important things like target coordinates etc. But you get used to having to force-filter it out. On the receiving end you can hear who has feedback loops because their rate of speech slows down.

[@ATruckCampbell]

Why is there a delay then? Your job is to be the most effective fighter you can be, and that seems like a major impediment to that task.

[@mark-sg6wo]

because the military likes to cheap out on infantry equipment@@ATruckCampbell

[@MortenBN1988]

@@ATruckCampbell It isn’t supposed to be there. Because the headsets are noice cancelling, your voice is meant to be audible in your headset because speaking without being able to hear yourself is surprisingly hard and you are prone to shouting. That voice feedback loop goes through several electronic components from the time you speak till it comes back in your ear and I think the delay occurs when some of these components are faulty or have bad ground connections. So it is usually fixed the next time the vehicle is in for scheduled maintenance.

[@ATruckCampbell]

@@MortenBN1988 Interesting, thanks.

[@MaintDocs]

Fishing vessel radios and phones too. It's still very annoying. But his device here stutters and modulates that so it isn't even a consistent thing to tune out.

[@elduderino007]

If you've ever worked at a call center you learn very quickly how to speak through auditory feedback. People will just leave you on speaker and you get used to just pushing through.

[@angelmejiagalvan7736]

facts, in those places ive literally seen foos sleep while taking calls and somehow they are the ones with the best metrics

[@ALCRAN2010]

​@@angelmejiagalvan7736, just hang up more calls than the ones you answer

[@bes12000]

Yep t's a struggle depending on how severe the feedback is, I had one the other day that was extremely loud, literally was getting a headache.

[@kj_H65f]

Or if you're autistic and your living experience is pushing through distraction all the time anyway.

[@charlesgrace5353]

lmaooo I honestly dont even bother with those calls anymore. I be spending way more time tryna understand them then getting a deal.

[@gabrielfair724]

Sonic speech jamming weapons were used by the police against the occupy wall Street speakers. It was wildly successful in disrupting the protests

[@NigelTolley]

Free speech in America, until you use it against the powerful.

[@leolandi3852]

Literally losing real time freedom of speech lol

[@janchristianursuaaguilar7434]

Perfect for those annoying religious street preachers because seriously, it gets heaps annoying each time you commute for work for going to a cosplay event

[@danielaull5386]

​@@janchristianursuaaguilar7434 just ignore them put headphones in there is no need to be rude or try to stop free speech cuz they are " anoying"

[@janchristianursuaaguilar7434]

@@danielaull5386 threatening them of devine punishment is not free speech

[@dylandog1289]

I have to do this constantly while at work (airport). We regularly speak on radios while having other radios on the same frequency nearby. You hear you own voice on a half second delay and have to keep it together because you’re speaking with flight crews. Challenging but fun once you master it. When i got the job i would recite common pilot relay phrases while listening to talk radio/podcasts and try not to stumble over my words. Being able to communicate clearly in a loud environment without tripping over your words is incredibly useful.

[@HBCUSportsReport-fu5eo]

Great story and perspective! I totally agree with your assertion, as well.

[@tinamarie7568]

Great way to practice! I know my brain gets completely scrambled whenever I hear my voice back with a delay

[@ArcanaCheckPls]

That's actually a super interesting story! I imagine that was so stressful at first.

[@MadofaA]

it’s frequency modulation

[@reavl6494]

had to learn to do this on the fly once when i was casting a tournament, the equipment had unexcepted delay on the monitoring

[@AveryMossMagic]

Dude this was such a joy to participate in!!! Thanks for being a great hang and an awesome mad scientist. 🤟 🤯

[@brandobin]

Omg when I saw the thumbnail I was like "is that Die Mad"

[@EstoniaParlament]

Mil mad scientist teams welcome! For public education & protection

[@Nornec]

Had a bunch of fun participating. I should train myself with such a device -- maybe it would make it easier?

[@elmusico9183]

didnt Muhammad marry a child? @@Anthony-sm5om

[@atomictraveller]

i bet you have zero fun not ever being xoxos when you do all the audio stuff and aren't anywhere near as good as if you were xoxos. xoxos is like a god to all of you guys.

[@Nornec]

@@atomictraveller is that a cool new hardware synth? it sounds like a cool new hardware synth.

[@trueriver1950]

It does indeed get easier with practice to overcome deferred audio feedback. See my top level comment on that, and it's use in training for simultaneous translation professionals

[@trueriver1950]

The thing that makes musicians more vulnerable to this device is that they are used to keeping in time with fellow musicians. That skill quite plausibly would make it harder for them to ignore audio input that for the musically challenged. My prediction would be that people who cannot keep in time nor in tune when they attempt to sing to an accompaniment would absolutely walk this challenge... Definitely worth a scientific test of the above theory with statistically valid sample sizes of participants with different musical skills in each group.

[@useazebra]

"knob con" in London is NSFW

[@mouthwaterin]

Everything is NSFW in london

[@shroomlord682]

london is nsfw

[@TayWoode]

everything in London is NS 😂

[@LiMCRiMZ]

A delayed latency from a cheap USB mic + headphones was enough to totally break my brain when I first started experimenting with vocal recording. This shit is so real and so annoying for novice producers

[@snowwsquire]

the latency isn’t from the mic and headphones, almost every usb mic is capable of being sufficiently low latency, it’s from your operating system

[@sophisticatedmorons]

😂😂😂😂

[@HTG.Tempest]

Sample rate needs an adjustment, or grab an interface with direct monitoring.

[@ferretyluv]

Funny that I’ve heard a latency actually helps stutterers speak more clearly.

[@kurtangusofficial]

music recording requires an audio interface to get low latency. It's not the operating system@@snowwsquire

[@brandex2011]

I tried a delayed auditory feedback in around 1962 in an expo at the University of Texas. It's impossible to overcome for more than a few seconds. It virtually scrambles the-the-the brain.

[@smeezekitty]

I gotta wonder how they even achieved that in '62. A tape loop?

[@brandex2011]

@@smeezekitty Yes. I was a kid, and I was sure I could beat it... Wrong! The brain is what it is, and there are many neural circuits that cannot be managed. I did fairly well, though...several seconds - I think it was somewhere close to 10 seconds. Looking back, I think I could have done better reading unfamiliar material. The experiment stipulated reading a nursery rhyme like "Mary Had a Little Lamb" which was already pre-programmed into the subject's consciousness presenting a kind of double-whammy. Interesting.

[@cagneybillingsley2165]

looks like a disruptor of npcs who have too much internal monologue

[@SloverOfTeuth]

​@@smeezekitty Reel to reel tape recorders had separate record and playback heads, so you could monitor what was being recorded via the playback side, with a slight delay which depends on tape speed.

[@jameson1239]

I found with some really cheap speech jammers basically just some headphones that playback what your saying some people who aren’t neurotypical can handle it better which was interesting

[@Cosmic.Origin.exe.]

Please stop aiming it at the President....

[@zoonymy9249]

Please

[@Made_in_America1256]

Came to the comments to say this

[@garywhitt98]

You win the internet.

[@crwelch12]

😂

[@Azd1r]

naah, fuq it, aim it at the president

[@lyndaniel3369]

This was an eye-opening and entertaining use of electronics. I envy your knowledge and imagination. Thank you so much for this video!

[@leighdf]

I used to work in the USAF (in the 1980s), setting up long-distance communications. We used to have great fun with delayed feedback, so as soon as I saw the title here I had a pretty good idea of what the technique was going to entail. Of course, for us the victims were typically wearing headphones. BRAVO for getting it to work with directional speakers!

[@somedudeok1451]

That blonde guy actually beat the test too. Sure he slowed down, but he didn't make a mistake. I think he should've counted as a winner.

[@ethancollinsworth3927]

at the beginning he said jamming is slurring, stuttering, or slowing.

[@tumultuousv]

Okay and? Slowing isn't jamming. It's an interference. Sure.not jamming.

[@tumultuousv]

@^^

[@ethancollinsworth3927]

jamming literally means to cause an interference…

[@AnAwkwardlyPlacedSausage]

​​​​@@ethancollinsworth3927theres no listed definition that says that, so no, it does not literally mean an interference, it means to cease somethings ability to function, if I'm speaking clearly just slowly, I'm still functioning, hence not jammed.

[@insu_na]

With more transducers you could probably create a phased array that's capable of tracking a target while itself remaining stationary... I love your channel. Such variety in topics, yet all audio related, and with incredibly diverse ideas

[@b.l.a.biglovealwaysbiglove4053]

Exactly what I was thinking, this seems like a toy version of the real deal. Kinda got me thinking of all those times politicians & tv presenters froze up suddenly, maybe they've been testing this out for a while. I don't like it, in fact I hate that this kind of tech exists in a way. The science of it is very interesting however.

[@insu_na]

@@b.l.a.biglovealwaysbiglove4053 To be fair, it's not like you're not noticing this when it happens to you, so when you're giving a public speech and someone is jamming you with such a device, you can say something like "I'm sorry I have to interrupt my speech because someone is using a speech jamming device" or something. It'll take some concentration but it's doable

[@mrtechie6810]

​​@@insu_nayou should recommend that excuse to the Biden administration!

[@ifuckedurmom]

​@@b.l.a.biglovealwaysbiglove4053just that the people currently freezing up look like they're a breath away from falling over, so i doubt it's them being jammed when theres enough other reasons

[@Hexnilium]

DARPA has entered the chat.

[@chef_rockyc]

I was born, raised, and lived in Arlington Heights for 20 years. Love to you and yours

[@JK-zx3go]

Soon to be available from Behringer for $99.99

[@JK-zx3go]

@@Anthony-sm5om na yer awrite son.

[@QW3RTYUU]

I remember hearing about japanese intervention force using something like this to disarm public speakers/peace disrupters without violence. Nice video!

[@ZeranZeran]

Yes! Scientology uses them too, it confuses people and makes them want to leave the area

[@allanmcelroy9840]

​@@ZeranZeranreally?

[@solarprogeny6736]

It's still some kind of violence if you ask me

[@ZeranZeran]

@@allanmcelroy9840 It blasts noises that you can't hear, but that hurt your ears badly. I believe it also uses the same technology as in this video. It's been around for a long time.. why Scientology has access to it is a mystery. Do they still have people in the military and IRS!? The IRS straight up admitted defeat to them, that's the entire reason they dont get taxed

[@kaden-sd6vb]

​@@ZeranZeranoh. That's concerning.

[@SailingFrolic]

I’ve actually improvised lyrics for an entire song while having a delayed auditory feedback going on, i recorded it in 2016. It… honestly somehow came out surprisingly ok but you can hear me struggle saying words like brother, didn’t, and gonna. Kinda cool seeing someone revisiting it with hypersonic arrays like that. Also super cool seeing Jeremy Blake again.

[@236260]

Dude! Fascinating. I need to go back and finish the hum video now. Definitely subscribed.

[@tunneloflight]

I ran into this doing a presentation to an audience where we were using a computer presentation (years before zoom) and when we went live someone inadvertently changed something and I ended up hearing myself at full volume a half second delayed. Being live there wasn’t an opportunity to change anything. I did the entire hour long ‘show’ that way, including Q and A. No one could tell anything was wrong. Afterwards, my coworkers asked how it felt. So I had them sit in the chair and try. None of them could complete even one sentence. We fixed it for the next show in the series, and all went well. I too am not a musician. I also am not fooled by the vast majority of audio illusions. I most often hear exactly what is there, not the creation of what is expected to be there. With jazz music, missing notes are common. And the vast majority of people ‘hear’ the missing notes. Their brains fill in the blanks. Mine doesn’t. I suspect that your one success story may similarly process sound differently from you and most other people. I have often wondered if this is the result if different brain architecture related to Neanderthal, or Denisovan genes. If true, it may tell us a lot about differences in cognition. I suspect this too because of the extreme development of the visual cortex in Neanderthals compared to Sapiens who seem to be more specialized in audio than visual processing. That too may then tie to other differences. The highly parallel processing in vision may then mean that those brain structures support cognition that operates that way. I suspect this is highly present in most engineers for example. On the other hand, sound processing is different and equally rich, though in a completely different way. As you were at a convention whose focus was audio, it isn’t surprising that on;y one person was the exception. If you are able to try this again with other groups (engineers, cinematographers, artists, writers, …) you may see very different results.

[@mindchangesrelaxationthera9547]

Could the military use this to prevent protestors from speaking in public?

[@TheTechmaster1999]

@@mindchangesrelaxationthera9547 I think its too much of a precision device to be useful for groups of protestors

[@chronischgeheilt]

I wondered If it was about Tone deaf people, since they process audio Signals differently... If I May ask, are you Tone deaf/Not able to Hit notes when singing as Well?

[@EdzCreationz]

Can you think in sound?

[@chronischgeheilt]

@@EdzCreationz one could argue Synasthesia being somewhat Like thinking in Sound ^^

[@Cian-_-]

it would be interesting for the viewer to get a demo of how the jammer actually sounded like for the people targetted! Definitely want to see a more indepth video on this, it's really cool.

[@AutPen38]

Presumably the effect is similar to what happens if you try singing while monitoring with wireless Bluetooth headphones that have too much latency. Just a few milliseconds of delay between your mouth making a sound and your ears actually hearing it can make you freeze up. (A related issue occurs when you try to record some midi keyboard playing with two much latency. Your fingers just can't play in time).

[@FriendlyNeighborhoodNitpicker]

I was wishing to hear that as well. I was hoping he would have put a Lavalier microphone on one of the targets so we could hear what they were hearing. Especially that guy who did it without any real difficulty. He’s using an effects pedal to manipulate the speech, so I’m not sure if he’s just playing it on delay or if he’s actually scrambling samples or what is it he’s doing.

[@Kittsuera]

you could prob self inflict it at home. just turn on the "listening to this device" or which ever setting in windows so you hear yourself in the head set. be sure its a headset or you'll get feed back. there is a slight delay and its very off putting. like it interrupts your train of thought, causing you to want to pause after every word.

[@kujojotarostandoceanman2641]

Just get a website to tune it, you mic in it play back

[@knyt0]

there have been websites for this for years and years

[@AstraEnigma]

I work in a call centre and I cannot tell you how many times I've experienced this, often you get that echo on the phone and it really screws me up, it's so great to hear an explanation as to why! Thanks!

[@benjazeman]

This was just straight up awesome, thank you

[@Ty.ty.ty0]

There is a lady in Australia who broadcasts radio on the ABC (government public radio). Her name is Nas Campanella and she is blind. When she is presenting news from a script, it is played to her via headphones and she is speaking it simultaneously and fluently. I'm not sure if this could be related to the type of work you are doing in this video but if you happen to read this, I hope there is some interesting thoughts or ideas that you may find.

[@drdca8263]

Huh! This kind of surprises me that that’s the setup they use! I guess reading from a brail display (... maybe “display” is the wrong word? Output-device.) would be too slow? Or maybe just harder for her personally? Or maybe she or the company doesn’t want the brail-output-device visible on camera? Or... Actually, I guess blind people using computers probably mostly use audio rather than brail output, because their hands are already on keyboard and mouse, and using a brail display would require switching between them? ... so, then, now I’m wondering if perhaps blind people use brail less often than I imagined? (and less often than they used to) Like, it is still on signs and such of course, but, seeing as putting it on paper would be costly, and so much is now done by computer, which can have headphones... huh.

[@FriendlyNeighborhoodNitpicker]

@@drdca8263 braille display is the correct term, that is how they are marketed and what they are called. Blind people with computers use them quite a lot. However probably for the reasons you describe, braille use among the blind is declining rapidly. It is causing interesting problems with literacy skills and other issues as well, so there are many organizations and people who are trying to fight back against it, but it is a serious problem among the blind. Just for reference, braille displays can also be used with smart phones. One of the reasons that braille displays, while available and used by thousands have been less popular than speech on computers, even among braille users, is that they are traditionally very very expensive. Back in the 90s, it would be not uncommon to see a braille display go for $5000 or $10,000 or even more in some cases depending on the features and size. Some of them are much cheaper now, at $3000 or less, but even so they are still fairly expensive and Blind people do not tend to have large disposable incomes. State agencies don’t tend to buy things for the blind unless it is job related, and even then they usually make you justify it six ways to Sunday.

[@FriendlyNeighborhoodNitpicker]

Regarding the lady in Australia who has the script read to her in her earpiece, I literally did that every week for five years. And still do it periodically when publicly speaking. I am blind and write my scripts and notes and things on a computer and then copy them to an iPhone. Then through a Bluetooth earpiece I read the script back, the phone speaks it into my ear, and I speak it more or less accurately (depending on how much I want to add Lib or whether I want to change some of the content). Sometimes I use a Bluetooth footpedal to navigate the lines of the script, to better control the speed and so that my hands can be free. Other times I just use a finger on the touchscreen to swipe between lines. Most people have no idea I’m doing any of this. The foot pedal is more reliable, by the way, because it keeps me from losing my place. If I am just swiping my finger on the touchscreen, sometimes because of the way the phone reacts, I might skip several lines or jump back several lines by touching incorrectly or at the wrong speed or whatever. That doesn’t happen with the foot pedal unless I accidentally tap it twice, and then it’s just a matter of tapping the other pedal to go back up. The foot pedal I use also has a volume control on it (two smaller pedals)- it is a Page Flip dragonfly quad-pedal.. One of the real annoyances with doing this, is that every once in a while you will run into a sufficiently sensitive microphone, that the artificial speech in the earpiece will be picked up to some extent by the microphone. For example, I once had some musicians using headphones, tell me that they could hear what I was reading. They couldn’t understand it but they could hear it. So that’s always a paranoia for me.

[@EvincarOfAutumn]

It’s fascinating how “parroting” like that, while it does take practice to do fluently, is still so much easier than talking while hearing yourself delayed. Translators/interpreters do it all the time, and it’s not the hard part compared to the actual translation. Also yeah it’s way more common to use text to speech than a Braille display. Even a nice model is pretty limited in how much it can display at once and how fast it can refresh, so an earpiece makes more sense for a broadcast anyway.

[@johnnyc.31]

Now add the complexity of live language interpreters who need to accurately adapt meaning for press conferences and diplomatic meetings.

[@supersilencer]

Wow this explains everything !!! I used to be confused once when I did a public announcement, the speakers were delayed to the exact point that interferred my brain, but I managed to fight back and remain the coherency by simply ignoring outside voices, not a pleasant experience though hahaha

[@danjwalker]

I saw something similar in a TED talk roughly a decade ago. It made people in the audience think a soda can was being opened inside their head. You could hear their audible "AWWWS" as he swept the speaker through the audience.

[@AsmodeusMictian]

One step closer to the Jaws ad from Back to the Future. But they would NEVER think to do something like that, right? ...right??

[@hrafnafadhir]

Holy hell! Benn, I didn’t know you had a KZbin channel. I love your music so much! It is the best electronic music I will ever hear.

[@sauce_aux]

When you’re a little kid, and you and your friend simultaneously scream really high - you get that lower oscillation, warbling inside your head. I love it. Your details of this sound laser remind me of those days on the playground. My god we would get in trouble for screaming lol

[@MRblazedBEANS]

It's funny how every single kid did that. We screamed in eachother faces to hear that weird oscillation. I don't rememeber anyone showing me it we just kinda figured it out.

[@sauce_aux]

@@MRblazedBEANS yeah, it was totally by experience. It happened once, so keep doing it lol

[@catocall7323]

That's a harmonic dissonance. You are essentially just singing out of tune with each other. It's what you hear when your guitar is out of tune. In fact when tuning strings you listen to that oscillation and make it slower until it cancels out.

[@GreedyOrange]

we called it "THX" not bc of thanks,but because of the thx home cinema ad :D

[@uploadJ]

Ditto - remember it too!

[@Orangutangologas]

Dude, you can fake the location of sound! From art to immersive experiences: monsters breaking the door, throwing a fart sound around, whatever you can imagine. This has entertainment value!

[@mscman13]

This is how sound bars and "5.1" or "7.1" headphones work. A combination of well-directed speakers and other audio processing effects can trick most brains.

[@AosorarisuUnedited]

@@mscman13 Or just ventrilquism in general. I'm curious if that is how they got the idea for 'surround sound'.

[@ellemueller]

My first though turned to places like Disney World, Universal Studios, Disney Land, etc, doing interactive entertainment like the Haunted Mansion and such.

[@b_korthuis]

​@@mscman13that's not entirely true. Traditional 5.1 and 7.1 speakers are cone shaped. The sound from a cone spreads out from the source, making it impossible to focus the sound waves as precise as this device. To throw the sound without it spreading out, the sound must come from a "flat" speaker, such as a piezoelectric crystal. When the sound is produced by a flat surface, there is minimal dispersion of the sound waves.

[@izwe794]

I worked in a call center for a while. Our voip system would occasionally break or maybe it was their voip. Regardless I'd have to take a call where I had an echo of my voice. I believe I got better at it to the point where I could do a call without issue while having an echo. I wonder if its a learnable skill people can break into having with practice.

[@GoogleUser-if3xi]

it is I work at a call centre and have had this happen on the phones often enough I can speak through a voice jammer with no issues

[@steveneaton9611]

You take the Plantronics Voyager 5200 set off when you're not talking. Problem solved.

[@michaelcherokee8906]

Didnt you just say you learned it? Kinda means it must be learnable, doesnt it?

[@Xw3dn3sd4yX]

This was FASCINATING! Thank you so much for explaining all this in such an easily digestible form. I encounter this delay issue nearly constantly when I'm on Discord with my buddy on Xbox using Discord. I'm sure it's something to do with latency and transmission times and then introducing Bluetooth into the mix it makes sense that this occurs. I just wish I could make it stop lol it scrambles my brain like crazy!

[@famitory]

would love to see if it's possible to overcome the effect through practice. many autistic people (myself included) have tremendous difficulty isolating one person speaking when there are other sounds or voices present, but some can learn to overcome that with a lot of practice. it seems like that "tune out" ability should also be adaptable to tuning out your own delayed voice.

[@Beegpapijimbo]

I was wondering the same thing. There are a few different reasons someone might have to learn to internally filter or cope with incoming noise and how it's perceived, it's interesting to think about how that changes the effectiveness of speech jamming

[@rainbowkrampus]

I had the exact same thought. People who have actually had to practice selective listening might perform differently than the average population. I suspect Keegan has had some kind of experience with this for one reason or another.

[@iamsushi1056]

I'm autistic, and I've used a speechjammer app before. It's hard. That said, I've trained myself to be able to listen to multiple conversations, but I'm also a musician. I subconsciously rely on auditory feedback to shape what noises I'm making. It could be possible, or but "multiple conversation training" and "speechjammer training" could actually be the same thing in opposite directions. Interesting idea, though.

[@DuckPerc]

If you enable "listen to this device" in windows settings, you can get a weak version of this effect. If you can run audacity, you can tune the delay to be as uncomfortable as possible, and then turn the volume down until you can speak over it. Increase the volume as you get better at ignoring it. Then maybe add in some variable length delay like Benn did, cause that really sounds fucked up xD I bet if you let it run every time went on discord or teams or whatever, you'd eventually get to be as composed as that guy

[@georgesos]

I think the same. Let me practice for a minute ,I bet 100 dollars that I can get his 100...

[@jonreeves3374]

Ham radio operators can occasionally experience this especially when using digital signal synthesizers. It is usually intermittent and occurs quite rapidly causing not only difficulty speaking but dizziness and nausea. I have both experienced it and heard others who sounded as though they were having a stroke and subsequently had a panic attack on air.

[@steveneaton9611]

I'm an old ham so I don't know this one from experience.

[@ExxonYT]

Would be interesting to test people with / without an internal monologue. I hypothesize that the issue arises when hearing your internal monologue read it before you read it, then also hearing the feedback

[@TheTechAdmin]

I love your work. Keep it up! 👍

[@PlanetaryResetMusic]

As a musician who did a lot of (not very great) broadcast work in college, feedback delays like that are something you definitely learn to get past

[@jefftheworld]

When I was younger I was much more affected by this phenomenon, but a couple of decades of being very active in voice chat servers-one of the places where this effect commonly occurs simply by accident-and I am now very resistant to the effect, able to push through without much change to my speech patterns or cadence. However, pushing through the effect does require more focus than speaking normally, so I can still feel that the effect is present.

[@jefftheworld]

@@Anthony-sm5om This phenomenon affects Muslims as well.

[@michaelcherokee8906]

Never learned the difference between "effect" and "affect" though, which is a shame.

[@Mdcatlas]

This could be so useful for tuning rooms and hearing how certain frequencies are reflecting off of surfaces

[@Darthflips]

So jealous. I wish we had a knob con here. This channel has some all of my fav things in one. Music, science and phenomenon. You have a nice collection of synths, drum machines and studio gear. I would like to hear more about your other interests as well.

[@joelbell6075]

I've experienced this! There was an array of squares embedded into the ceiling above me at work, and when I stood beneath them I'd hear a distracting echo a split second after I spoke, and it always made it difficult to talk!

[@queasyweasel]

I seen this 20 years ago in TIME Magazine! No idea why this tech hasn't slapped harder, having a "silent disco" with these on the ceiling beaming down your music selection to your personal 3'x3' square of a dancehall sounds like the best thing ever 🤘

[@f3rny_66]

sonar festival used a audio zoning technology last time I went.. 10+ years ago? you could walk between areas of sound, it was really cool

[@markjacobson4248]

Hypersonic speakers are frequently not particularly comfortable. The thing to keep in mind is that the inaudible sounds are often still extremely loud, and even if you can't hear the sound as sound, you can still feel the headaches and such that extremely loud sound can cause. It's not as cut and dry as I explained it, but it's still a major issue with the tech

[@SineEyed]

@@markjacobson4248 yeah I'm not sure why he went about making a device this way, aside from the possibility that he hadn't seen anyone else do it exactly like that yet. Looks like a fun project, if not a bit over-engineered. There are other ways to obtain the same effect without burdening yourself with the difficulties inherent to building a phase locked transducer array. I can only imagine how tedious it was trying to tune and align that emitter. There's at least one app available for mobile devices which delays the audio picked up by a phone's mic, before retransmitting what it hears to the headphone jack. Headphones are required; quality headphones used for monitoring, or a decent pair of noise-cancelling headphones would be ideal for getting the best results. The app is free, and it would eliminate the liability of goofing off with a 200 watt hypersonic audio laser in public..

[@totally_not_a_bot]

​@@markjacobson4248As demoed in Benn's previous video on acoustic weapons.

[@johnd7564]

It's VERY hard to support stereo, because your left ear would have to receive at least one different ultrasound signal than the right.

[@danielbrooks892]

"I cannot express how uncomfortable feedback would be from a hypersonic sound array pointed at your head." *The Department of Defense has entered the chat*

[@ryanwolfe2219]

Sonic weapons do and have existed, DOD been on it lol just hella niche Good for crowd dispersal apparently

[@banzobeans]

😆💯

[@skie6282]

​@@ryanwolfe2219mattee of fact they were used by dod under trump to clear out actually peaceful protesters in d.c.. by peaceful i mean they were just standing around a not busy road, by the whitehouse if i recall right.

[@beetlebob4675]

LRAZ has silenced the chat😂

[@Chevalier_knight]

They stopped using them in the middle east because the higher ups where rightly thinking that burning the top layer of fat with sound waves may be a warcrime.

[@AmazingPhilippines1]

Sound is energy. I spent years in the "noise control" "acoustics" business trying to solve sound issues with reverberation (echo) in many different types of environments.

[@eyeseehere]

As someone with bad Auditory Processing Disorder who's brain generally "skips" every third word heard, I would LOVE to try this. I can't rely on hearing speech and so my brain has basically developed an auto correct feature to fill in the blanks. Another issue is I talk quiet and fairly slow, sometimes stuttering. I am SO curious to know if this would barely effect me or be horribly unbearable.

[@skye4082]

Same! I’d love to test it out and see how I react (though if it is heard as a loud sound I may get overwhelmed from it and just stop speaking entirely)

[@Majornimrod]

SAME I FINALLY MET SOMEONE LIKE ME IM CRYING

[@skye4082]

@@Majornimrod pro tip: this is a very common thing to coincide with an Autism and/or ADHD diagnosis, you will find many people in those spaces that you can relate to with this aspect! :) in case you were looking for more people to talk about what this is like! But generally I’d recommend researching a little bit into Auditory Processing Disorder, and people/channels talking about it

[@Jehty_]

Shouldn't it be easy to try for yourself? If I understand it correctly you don't need the speakers he used or anything fancy. You just need a program on your computer or smartphone that records your voice and plays it back a bit delayed. Shouldn't be to hard to find a program that does that.

[@eyeseehere]

@@Jehty_ I’ve tried it before, but I can never 1: find the correct audio delay and 2: find headphones good enough to trick me

[@michaelfarmer537]

What a cool video! I’ve always been fascinated by the power of sound and vibrations. Thank you for inspiring more thought on this subject! ❤

[@Zach-mi6to]

Look up cymatics. Fascinating.

[@TransNeingerian]

When people ask if it can be used for evil, they dont mean by other citizens, they mean by a government. Nothing is too evil or expensive for a government.

[@annwithaplan9766]

This type of technology has already been in use for years.

[@MattMajcan]

of course. if this random private citizen has this technology and the government hasnt swooped in on him its because they already have the technology. anyone remember that whole havana syndrome thing? who knows whats going on behind the scenes

[@RealPaydayMonsanto]

@MattMajcan yeeah, just silly to arbitrarily proclaim that there's no way for that to happen ..when in fact it is being used on the masses, selectively and concomitantly, as just a small part of a much larger bio field hijacking system that most cannot even begin to imagine,

[@xeoncat]

When they park the big white van with the cooling unit you just know they're packing some serious hardware in there

[@moonandtanu7591]

No government wants to spend insane money for some random generic person from whom they get noting but tax payers dollars

[@SpiritOfLion]

“My invention is purely for amusement” - inventors of hot air balloons, fireworks and remote-controlled toys

[@SP4CEBAR]

There has to be at least one person who's speech skills are so well developed that they can't be stopped

[@guyincognito.]

It's really not about speaking skills so much as being able to 'turn off' the processing of what you're hearing and preventing it from interfering in your speech. An analogy is how you can speed read by 'turning off' your subvocalization of the words. That's the best way I can describe it anyway.

[@suttreedelorge4587]

im sure a lot of people can, i know myself speech jammers dont affect me at all for some reason

[@syeblaize]

I don't know how well I'd do at it with this device, but I worked a cell phone tech support line for 7 years. I got pretty good at ignoring my own echoing speech, as there were a lot of instances of echo due to interference and cheap car Bluetooth setups.

[@kujojotarostandoceanman2641]

This weapon won't work on every idian hotline caller as their calls are already delayed jamed

[@Kelticfury]

There is, but her name is Karen and she would like to speak to your manager.

[@IntiAlonso]

@RedMeansRecording was also able to do it, he just stoped by his own choice, but didn't stutter or misspronounced anything. Amazing.

[@ThatNerdGuy0]

I’ve found that the best way to bypass the jammer is to just keep talking and focus on your own voice, but I’ve never had the jammer inside my skull so this could be very different

[@anonymous5401]

some people dont have an internal monologue and have to actively listen to themselves talk, so using this jammer on those people would make them pratically useless.

[@pallingtontheshrike6374]

the jammer is precisely to hit your own voice. untested, but a potential route is actually to just completely blank your mind aside from whatever you plan to say- shit listeners/people who regularly talk through others would actually be much more likely to pass without issue

[@EpicBunty]

perfect example of how people who don't know anything about anything making stuff up.@@anonymous5401

[@qx4n9e1xp]

"focus on your own voice" you're completely missing how this device works. It overpowers your own voice, and you feel like your own voice is lagging behind the movements of your mouth/vocal chords, so your brain tries to adjust, and that's when stuttering happens. It's happened to me before, and the sensation was weird. I was playing an online game, someone in my group chat connected & had good mic quality, but was feeding back my own voice, so there was a precise & consistent delay in my own voice being played back to be by my headphones. I was absolutely unable to speak, and told the person to shut off their mic/fix their audio. I remember feeling incredibly weird how we can speak over large crowds, other people talking, but any speech that follows the exact pattern of our own words, but delayed, our brains try to "adjust" or stop from "interruption" because it automatically associates that speech as our own.

[@ThatNerdGuy0]

@@qx4n9e1xp focus on your own voice means blotting out outside sounds, its happened to me before too and thats exactly what I did to make it stop.

[@freddymeisner]

You did a beautiful job of showing how fun experiments can lead to genuinely useful hypotheses

[@hostnik777]

Every live performing musician NEEDS this to point to the audience.

[@rasputinsliver3196]

Conversely, when a given musician (actor or athlete for that matter) strays from entertaining the paying-through-their-noses audience an' starts preaching their radical views at them, it could be used to shut the moron down. 👍😉👌

[@BigDaddyWes]

​@@rasputinsliver3196Who hurt you?

[@gonzalezvalencialeonel9563]

@@rasputinsliver3196 In what way do you enjoy art if you see it as something incapable of transmitting meaning?

[@rasputinsliver3196]

@@BigDaddyWes, always works both ways, pookie. 😉

[@jamesphillips2285]

@@rasputinsliver3196 No fascism works by blaming marginalized groups for society's problems. If killing the fist group does not work (it never does, since they were never the problem), the authoritarians move on to the next marginalized group. It only stops when society collapses.

[@Quickloaded]

I had to do public reading on a stage back in school. There was a delay in the amplification I think and hearing my own voice delayed felt as if someone was constantly trying to cut me off. I'm sure public readers can get used to this phenomena.

[@RegebroRepairs]

Oh, it's YOU who is trying to get Mitch McConnell to retire. Please continue. 🙏

[@ManInAnger]

Ok I've felt this so many times over chats in game where I hear my own voice coming back through someone else's mic. It actually just stops me from speaking unless I focus super hard

[@FullMetalAtheist]

6:48 This guy did/was doing perfectly fine, seemed like an unfair call.

[@stephengnb]

Right? Seems like he realized he would have to pay the $100.

[@potatosdominion7226]

From my experience with calls echoing your own voice, getting past the echo is a test of mental adaptability. In a way you have to isolate your thinking from your surroundings and focus on what you are about to state. This is often counterintuitive to what people experience as when you verbally communicate, you expect to get a response and your brain then focuses on the response. There are some other factors that go into the reading portion as well, such as your reading pattern and speed. If you often look ahead as you read out loud you are less likely to stumble over your own words as you know what to expect next. None of this has any definitive data behind it, but it is what I believe is the reason.

[@psychosageio]

I got hit with about 1-2s delayed audio feedback when doing a wedding speech once, it was brutal. That said, I still nailed the speech (I wouldn't have known if people hadn't tell me), but I was quite inebriated and had been for the prior 3 days pretty much non-stop.

[@i420PraiseIt]

I was born with a stutter and I have experimented with delayed audio feedback and I can't explain the science behind it but it does seem to help with speaking. I have always described my stutter as my brain moving too fast that my mouth can't catch up. I think that somehow the delayed audio allows for my brain to slow down and focus more on speech. It is really fascinating!

[@danieljackson4266]

About 15 years ago or so I went to a popup technology musuem in manhattan somewhere. They had these chairs with a half circle about them. If you sat in the chair you couldn't hear anything outside of this semi-circle and nobody outside could here you inside. It was pretty cool and I've never again seen a demonstration like it

[@nguyenheaven]

I remember reading about those back then too! I’m envious you could experience them. They would be so valuable implemented in public spaces like schools and libraries or for long-distance meetings, especially in the advent of zoom conferences and teaching sessions.

[@lindosland]

That's nothing to do with the use of ultrasonic sound. It's sound cancellation, probably using a number of speakers producing the inverse of the sound as picked up by microphones, so that over a given area the real and inverted sounds cancel.

[@unliving_ball_of_gas]

​​@@lindoslandThat was what I thought. But it's still very impressive! It waayyyy harder to do sound cancellation with speakers vs with headphones/earphones. I wpuld really love some sort of video or explanation for this!

[@descargaelbano]

They have those chairs at the Palm Beach Science Museum. Only the two people sitting in the opposing chairs can hear each other even if you whisper

[@TimpBizkit]

@@descargaelbano I thought that was to do with parabolic/ellipsoid sections and sound wave focal points.

[@Mueller3D]

I remember a couple of times where I was in a big auditorium and given an audience microphone to ask a question. As I started to speak, I heard my voice from the speakers, loud and delayed, and it really threw me off at first. I had to really concentrate on speaking my question while ignoring what I was hearing, and it took more effort than I expected. I would certainly not want to repeat that experience for any length of time.

[@meh11235]

I used to investigate electronic harassment… you’d be shocked at the much more powerful systems used to stop people from speaking on specific topics when under clandestine surveillance…. Excellent video and experiment.

[@inadad8878]

Why did you stop? How many investigations did you do? What was the conclusion? Microwave weapons?

[@Sashazur]

If you do this, how can the people under surveillance not realize it? Everything’s normal until they start talking about something sensitive and then all of a sudden they hear annoying sounds. Of course they’ll know what’s going on. It’s still useful to suppress what people discuss and to send a message that they can’t hide, but it’s not clandestine at all.

[@HenryB6568]

much more powerful

[@lokisingularity3394]

Oh, I know all about electronic harassment and torture since Aug, 2016. Look up organized stalking, remote neural monitoring and... you guessed it electronic harassment and torture.

[@kennethflores-hv7uf]

@@lokisingularity3394you have any references for any articles on this? Seems pretty interesting as the only times I’ve heard of something similar are sound rooms

[@Archon-Zero]

Great video. That was fun. Thanks.

[@unsigned_long_long]

After having lived with an echo in my microphone for three+ years I can say I am damn near immune to this

[@manticore5733]

Reminds me of the story that individuals trying to get out of military service by claiming to be deaf were asked to talk whilst their voice was replayed to them with a short delay - they would end up talking slower and slower because they couldn't ignore that feedback.

[@cablevamp3163]

God I love this guy From freaking my friends out playing dishevel by The Flashbulb to taking audio engineering lessons from the same guy my life just has been pretty awesome

[@tinymom950]

I love how good of a sport he is with it. He lets them fuck with him in return then links their work

[@SKySWiM]

Back in the early 80's and still in college, I worked as sound engineer at a theme park (similar to Sea World), I did a joke on a dolphin trainer during a dolphin show that your video reminded me of. The trainers got their own separate monitor speakers that only they could hear (not the audience). I decided to hook up a delay guitar stomp box into the sound in his monitor speaker. The results were hilarious. He was still able to speak, but suddenly sounded like he was high on something when I turned up the delay in his mix. I knew he would be cool about this joke, and if I tried it with one of the more anal trainers (no pun intended), I would for sure have gotten into trouble. Thanks for your thought-provoking video. I wonder if your device would not just mess up singers, but musicians trying to play, also?

[@ollie7597]

Friend of mine back in college in 2016-17ish talked to me about this when a Japanese research project first came out about a similar device. Basically he was ethically opposed to such devices as it’s basically pure evil to forcibly remove the ability to speak to others.

[@unsoundmethodology]

The podcast "Blurry Photos" used to do this - in the non-ultrasonics version, using their headphones - as a sort of punishment for the hosts and/or hazing for their guests. (They apparently rediscovered the phenomenon by accident by misconfiguring their recording equipment.) Out of the couple of dozen people they tried it on, I only remember writer/game designer Kenneth Hite getting through his assigned reading without wiping out. The sound laser makes this a much more compelling prank on video, as it's much less obvious why people are suddenly tongue-tied.

[@kirillnadtochiy5039]

Jokes on you, my brain already does that to me every day.

[@JoelleTheAbsurdist]

I saw almost the exact same thing on another KZbin channel, they just used earphones. I can't remember the channel name, but, one surprising thing came from their tests... voice over artists could consistently work through the Delayed Auditory Feedback. I THINK, Maurice Lamarche, guessed it was because VOAs are used to ignoring things coming in on their monitors all the time. Other subset of people who might be able to read through the feedback, is pilots. They have to work through the noise of other people talking constantly.

[@nopenheimer]

It's beyond that. Pilots have to understand the vocal equivalent of doctors' handwriting but with more lives on the line.

[@sadmermaid]

I remember that one! I forget what channel

[@qzwxecrv0192837465]

I used to work in radio and got used to the auditory feedback, so doing an entire 2 minute remote broadcast with hearing myself delayed became normal. i would try having test subjects try reading for 30-60 seconds to see if they can adjust to the disturbance.

[@shadou1234567]

In Brazil there is a reaaallly old meme called "sanduiche-iche" where a nutricionist was being interviewed live on public street and the interview was streaming close with some delay, and the nutricionist stumble it away. To be fair, she never swered and she really tryed to give some information but she was memed hard, even making appearences on talkshows after.

[@LightS_bRight]

Hahahaha this is so funny can't wait for the government to mute me in public speechs

[@robertpreisser3547]

I have always hated speaking publicly using microphones because hearing my own voice on even a slight delay is disorienting…even though otherwise I am a confident speaker. This explains a lot.

[@HypotonicSponge]

This is kinda cool. A couple weeks ago I had an idea of being able to transmit sound in one direction but not being able to hear it from other directions but I now have a place to start. Thanks! 🎉

[@mikeaintnormal769]

When you gave us the audio example of what it sounds like, it reminded me exactly what it sounds like to have my ears clogged. As someone who has dealt with ear infections for a large part of my life, speaking while hearing myself slightly delayed is perfectly normal for me.

[@Evitaschannel]

Me too! The delays, echos, crackling, swooshing and beeps would have prepaired me for this 😂

[@kaitlyn__L]

This just helped me realise why I can talk fine with delayed voice feedback WHEN it’s distorted enough, but if it’s clear and clean and crisp it trips me up.

[@Ludifant]

This could interestingly disrupt public debates, influencing public opinion, kicking a democracy that died three years ago, but is decomposing upright

[@supersportimpalass]

There is a device similar to this that helps people who stutter to speak normally. It is basically a hearing aid that delays sound to the persons ear and helps them speak. Edit: I commented before you mention it in the video. 😊

[@macronencer]

The chopping up and variable delay times approach sounds very interesting - I was kind of hoping you'd show us how it actually sounded when applied to speech... any chance of that in another video?

[@YounesLayachi]

I was hoping it wouldn't be randomised and instead we see him dial up and down the delay and the frequency and observe the results as people read, but maybe the paragraph wasn't long enough and the video would be too long, as he said the goal wasn't to collect more data despite in the end finding a person that exhibited new data

[@guardian9394]

Theres a guy from my home town that hangs out on main street harassing people, calling young girls all sorts of names and telling everyone theyre going to hell. Total crackpot. Anyway, the police have been called on him several times but they always say that he technically isnt hurting anyone so they cant arrest him. I feel like he would be the perfect use case for such a sonic device.

[@urbnctrl]

Human Rights violations Jesus

[@zaodedong9935]

First Amendment jammer

[@guardian9394]

@@zaodedong9935 of course, he's exercising his first amendment right to stand around and call little girls "sluts" and "whores," who am I to stand in the way of such a patriotic display?

[@thehuntermikipl1170]

So you really think it's worth it making a sonic speech jammer, rather than simply ignoring him? XXI century people...

[@squidvis]

Just ignore him. He's not hurting anyone. You on the other hand... 🙄

[@annasha1986]

Such an interesting ending to that, basically if a person is primed not to listen to their own voice habitually or actively dislike and hence train their brain to not hear it they will be able to easily ignore the effects of the device. Musicians who would train for years to actively listen to voices and harmonics associated with them would find it difficult to ignore the effects. That is so cool!