Ok, Rob, you've really got my attention with this voice activation capability on the (for lack of a better term) Mark 2 empeg. Do you have any ideas what its capabilities will be?

In my dream world, I am hoping that I can say something like: "Empeg. Mozart. Shuffle" and the dear little box will find every single track by Mozart and play them in random sequence. Or, I can say something like: "Empeg. Rush. Moving Pictures. Track two", or even "Empeg. Rush. Red Barchetta", or maybe even "Empeg. Red Barchetta" and Geddy Lee will start singing about his uncle's Ferrari.

Maybe if I say "Empeg. Mozart" it will build a playlist of all my Mozart and I can go through and quickly remove from the playlist the tracks I don't want to listen to.

Can you offer us any insight as to what your plans are for this? A general overview of planned capabilities and how it will interact with the user? I'm sure that many of the posters on this bbs can come up with much more grandiose schemes than the simple examples I laid out above, but if it did nothing more than the above I would be very happy indeed.

Am I being too optimistic with my hopes and expectations? I freely confess I am completely clueless about the technical (i.e., programming) aspects that would be required.

tanstaafl.





"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

The operation you detailed is indeed the kind of thing that we hope to achieve with the empeg voice recognition system. It will be possible to train the system to recognise proper nouns (essential for selecting music!) using Windows/Linux/Mac software, which will probably become integrated with emplode. It is likely that specific links between words and playlists/tracks/genre/artists/etc will be something that the user decides upon.

Whether it will be possible to begin a command session by simply saying "empeg" or somesuch word isn't something we'll know for a while yet. It's more likely that it will be necessary to press a button on a steering wheel remote, in line with other in-car voice systems currently on the market.

Rob

what about just hitting the mic with your finger, empeg loocke for a sound that overload the input device and activate the sond reginition.

Mark
wait for mk III with a USB Host/slave
(USB->Ethernet)(USB->COM 1-8)(USB->You name it)

Probably not a good idea if the empeg is in a high SPL environment... =)

Jazz
(List 112, S/N 00030, 4 gig blue)

SPL ???

still if you set the input level as low as posible, tappint on the mic will still creat an extream high sound, that even the higest sound level from the speakers cant create.

Mark
wait for mk III with a USB Host/slave
(USB->Ethernet)(USB->COM 1-8)(USB->You name it)

Sound Pressure Level
A measurement used in sound off competitions (Quoted in Decibels)

Jazz
(List 112, S/N 00030, 4 gig blue)

SPL levels in competition can reach unbelievable (not to mention preposterous) levels.

The stereo shop that does my work (unsolicited plug: Audio Advisors, in Fairbanks, Alaska) has a big Chevrolet Dualie that competes in SPL, he can put a brief burst of 18,000 watts to his speakers (12 fifteen-inch subwoofers) and has hit an official 164 decibels in sanctioned competition, and unoficially has approached 170 db. This is with the measurement taken at the base of the windshield, not with the microphone stuffed down a speaker port or anything.

As a frame of reference, I have been told that a Boeing 747 jetliner during its takeoff roll will generate 115 decibels, but I don't remember how far behind the airplane the measurement was taken. 105 decibels is enough to cause permanent hearing loss. I have also been told that if you were actually inside the vehicle when it was making 160+ decibels, you would not survive, the sound pressure would kill you. I don't know if this is actually true or not - it may be another of those urban legends.

SPL cars are so extreme, you'll find them with the glass replaced with half-inch-thick lexan, screwed right into the window frame because the pressure will blow the windshield right out of the car. I have seen cars with chains and turnbuckles between the roof and the floor of the car to keep the roof from flexing to the point where the doors pop open and the windshield pops out. I have seen more than one competitor find out that a CD player can only generate 150 db (give or take a couple) because at that level the CD starts to skip. Some cars have been built with solenoid powered wedges to hold the doors shut.

The SPL people are, in a word, truly weird. Hmmm... I wonder how many decibels an empeg could endure before the hard drives started malfunctioning? In any case, I would venture to say that a built-to-the-max SPL vehicle would generate more sound pressure on the microphone than you would get by tapping it with your finger!

Hmmm.... I wonder too how many SPL people I offended with this posting? Worst sound quality I ever heard was Audio Advisors SPL truck. We played the 1812 Overture and couldn't even recognize the music enough to find the cannon shots. (His entire system is the dozen 15" subwoofers. Not a lot of mid bass or high end response there.... ;-)

Anyway, Mark, welcome to the wacky world of SPL competition. I take some pride that I have been told by the Vice President of IASCA (the body that sanctions the sound-off competitions) that I have, to his knowledge, the quietest car that has ever seriously competed. I can get a mighty 112 decibels maximum out of my system using the official SPL tracks on the competition disk -- I got 115 with the 1812 overture. Typical car in my class gets 125--135 decibels, and when you figure that each three decibel increase is a doubling of the sound pressure, either their cars are really loud, or mine is really quiet... but it sounds really, really good. ;-)

tanstaafl.






"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

So, the ideal competitors would be Disaster Area, the band whose concerts are best heard from concrete bunkers some 100 km from the stage (concerts are performed by robots controlled from a spaceship orbiting that or, preferably, some other planet).
(Douglas Adams - The Restaurant at the End of the Universe - part of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series)

Sorry - I could not resist :)


Dragi "Bonzi" Raos
Zagreb, Croatia
#5196

whell I dont think that they will use the voice regination system while sitting in the car at 170db+, so the just have to disconet the mic, as your voice proberly wont be loud enuf for the system to work.

have you ever tryed to play a 50Hz sound at peak level !!!

Mark
wait for mk III with a USB Host/slave
(USB->Ethernet)(USB->COM 1-8)(USB->You name it)

>>have you ever tryed to play a 50Hz sound at peak level !!!

Actually.... yes. Of course, my little stereo (150 watts total) only generates 112 dB, and my resonant frequency is actually closer to 70 Hz than 50 Hz) but some of the serious SPL cars... the whole car sort of blurs when they hit the gain, and I wear ear protection any time I'm within 50 feet of them.

They're all lunatics, actually, but I enjoy watching them, and the smell of burning speakers and fried amplifiers is always.... but I digress.

Did you know that all that electronic equipment is really powered by smoke? It must be, because once all the smoke leaks out of it, it quits working.

tanstaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

*sigh*

Now I have to move my MP3's of the HHGTTG Radio Show over to the Empeg tonight when I get home, guaranteeing I won't get to listen to actual music for several days worth of commute. ;-)

Thanks. ;-)