Yiyang Shen

A soundscape is a sound or combination of sounds that are formed from a specific location. It dynamically records the surroundings and trigger emotions, playing a vital role in our lives, but we almost ignore the infinite beauty of it.

We seldom appreciate what we hear to the same extent as what we see, using cameras to record their lives, but few people have the habit of recording sound. On the other hand, the main functions of current audio products related to environmental sounds, are warnings, voice enhancement, and noise reduction. They tend to be more functional while ignoring the sensitivity of listening.

In the future, our earphones may be in the form of bone conduction, our ears are completely liberated in the environment. We can hear the audio content and the ambient sound at the same time. How will our audio experience change at that time?

Bardsong has several elements, wearable microphone modules and a mobile application.
The wearable microphone module allows people to record their audio environment.

Bardsong has several elements, wearable microphone modules and a mobile application.
The APP analyses the soundscape and generates context-aware music in real-time.

For amateurs without previous knowledge of music, even if they were given the ability to extract sounds from the environment, they won't be able to create music in a short time. This is the main reason for stifling their enthusiasm for the music product.
Moreover, too many active interactions will disturb people's sensitivity to sound itself. Therefore, we have reduced the action/operation as much as possible, and let people experience the soundscape passively with the help of machine learning.

This product hopes to involve more people to engage with our acoustic environment through the concept of context-aware music social media. Through the experience, the product collects sound information and trains an optimized sound separation model. This is beneficial to the research and audio processing algorithm.
The third stage is a transparent listening product which helps you an optimized acoustic environment for everyone And it could be applicated to more fields.
For example, the accessories of augmented reality headset and glasses. When playing games, the ambient sounds could be modified to match the emotions of the game, to create a more scary or cheerful background sound. This project potentially brings people a "film-like" experience in the real world.
Also, existing hearing aids focus on the enhancement of specific sounds such as human voices and TV sounds while ignoring the desire for the actual auditory experience of the hearing impaired. This technology may bring a more realistic and personalized listening experience to people with hearing impaired.