Microsoft Is Working To Develop a Better Microphone

[Mike Temporale]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://research.microsoft.com/displayArticle.aspx?id=657' target='_blank'>http://research.microsoft.com/displayArticle.aspx?id=657</a><br /><br /></div>"Researchers from several groups at Microsoft Research have come up with a way to improve communication, using a basic rule of human physiology. We vibrate. More specifically, when we talk, the bones in our body vibrate. A bone-conductive microphone can pick up this vibration. People have used bone-conductive microphones before, but the researchers are using them in a completely different way. Bone-conductive microphones are less sensitive to background noise, and can filter out more than 95% of background speech. In a regular microphone, the sound waves from our speech create pressure differences in the air that the microphone can convert into electrical signals, which are then sampled by an analog-to-digital converter. However, environment noise or background speech will also produce electrical signals in the regular microphone."<br /><br />Now that sounds cool. 8) The article goes on to talk about the problems they are facing to ensure that the bone mic can correctly read the vibration from your body. I think the best solution is to have the bone mic connected via Bluetooth so you could strap it your body and not have to worry about pressing the phone against your ear in just the right manner. :D