Re: OT: Personal Audio Space?

["GRAY, Toby" <toby.gray@plantronics.com>]

The phase cancellation approach works really well. There are systems
designed to "sound proof" the interior of a car using this method by 
playing
back the real sound out of phase through the car's sound system. 
At the personal level, going back to the Greatful Dead's stage rear sound
system using pairs of Sennheiser (sp?) 211 omni mics mounted togeather and
wired out of phase, they were able to control the distance of the mic's 
pick
up pattern by a different volume level on one side of the pair. The down
side was it supposedly needed alot of EQ to bring the sound back to 
"normal"
and I beleive the omni characteristics were lost to a cariod pattern.
Going with this approach you could have a pair(s) of miniature mics sitting
in the middle of your dinner table and effectivly cancel out everything out
side of X number of feet if you were to wear isolated in ear monitors.

Modern conference phone technology has made big steps in this direction.
Check out Polycom products.

With a lot of the baby boomers loosing their hearing the hearing aid
companies and others are working full tilt on this problem. In the mean 
time
try taking Ginko for a few weeks and see if it helps.

Good luck,
Toby