NTT Sonority released the beam microphone speaker “LinkShell” on the crowdfunding site “Makuake (https://www.makuake.com/)”.
The product is equipped with an “intelligent microphone” developed by NTT Laboratories, which can filter out ambient noise and transmit only your voice to the other party.
The intelligent microphone consists of a technology called “beamforming” that recognizes where the sound is coming from by using the time difference between two microphones and a “spectral filter” that removes sounds other than human voice.
Regarding the development background of LinkShell, Jun Hasegawa, the company’s LinkShell product manager, said, “Remote work is becoming common, but on the other hand, people say that life sounds during important meetings and wearing earphones all day makes their ears tired. There are also issues, and we developed it to solve those issues.”
By the way, the company is also considering implementing the intelligent microphone into other smart devices.
“The point of an intelligent microphone is to place two microphones at a certain distance (25 mm to 30 mm), so it is difficult to implement in smartphones, but it is possible for other smart devices.” (Mr. Hasegawa) ).
The general selling price of LinkShell is 32,780 yen.