

Hush: The World's First Smart Earplugs - dskang
https://hush.technology/

======
nordsieck
The large 70db next to "hush the world" makes it sound like the earplugs offer
70db of noise reduction.

Which I know is BS, because the best earplugs made offer 33db of noise
reduction.

I can only assume that the 70db number is the sum of the noise attenuation and
the speakers' volume, but specific claims about the earplugs performance would
be nice.

~~~
d4n13ll33
Yeah, it is the sum of the passive attenuation of the earplug and the noise
masking. We don't have the test equipment yet to make a dB calculation of NRR
for the foam component, but from subjective tests when comparing with other
earplugs, the foam seems to block out about ~30dB!

------
d4n13ll33
Hacker News just broke our website, LOL

You could check out what we're doing on our Kickstarter, haha.

[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hush/hush-the-worlds-
fi...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hush/hush-the-worlds-first-smart-
earplug)

~~~
foxylad
Off topic, but possibly useful information for the OP. Your use of "haha"s are
quite off-putting for me, I think because to me they imply you are not taking
what you just wrote seriously.

Do they bother anyone else, or am I just out of touch with da yoof?

~~~
function_seven
I'll stick my own off-topic comment under yours. I agree. All the emoticons
and LOL's and extremely liberal use of the exclamation mark just rubs me the
wrong way.

We're probably picking nits. I'm sure Mr. Lee doesn't intend that impression
at all, and is probably overcompensating to make sure his tone isn't misread
as hostile or argumentative. I've noticed myself doing this at times, seeing
how often other commenters infer a different tone than what was intended.

------
bashinator
These are definitely not the world's first smart earplugs - Etymotic has been
offering this kind of technology for quite a long time now.

[http://www.etymotic.com/gsp15.html](http://www.etymotic.com/gsp15.html)

~~~
e12e
See also: [http://www.honeywellsafety.com/USA/Learn-
More/QUIETPRO_Clear...](http://www.honeywellsafety.com/USA/Learn-
More/QUIETPRO_Clearest_Communication,_Especially_in_High_Noise.aspx)

The problem as I understand it, is that the skin in the ears isn't really
tough enough to stick something in there for too long. Reportedly US marines
abandoned those linked above, as troops started bleeding from their ears after
a certain number of hours of use. Now, that was probably 20 hours+ - not
really a problem if used only for sleep _or_ only for work. But for any kind
of 24/7 use, something molded to the outer ears is probably better.

~~~
d4n13ll33
There are a lot of weird plastic shapes to the Quietpro design that I can see
irritating and making someone's ear bleed. If it was the foam causing people
to bleed, I'd find that very strange as there are millions of people that use
earplugs for hours and hours on end with no problem :/

~~~
e12e
Maybe i wasn't clear: the problem appears for troops that use them in war
zones: essentially days on end, not merely hours. If it was just the foam type
used, I'm sure they'd try and mix it up with something more soft. That was a
huge contract that was partially cancelled.

~~~
veb
I've always worn hearing aids, with ear moulds. They're worn all the time,
except for sleep. Other deaf people I know, wear them while sleeping for some
odd reason. I couldn't fathom to wear anything while sleeping!

They've never made my ears bleed, nor anyone else I know.

Maybe troops should wear properly fitted moulds :)

~~~
e12e
Well, you do take them out 8 hours of the day then. Here we're talking 24/7 in
dry desert heat.

------
masukomi
I've got two kinds of custom earplugs (different materials). Both literally
have a perfect fit for my ears. Both _suck_ to sleep in. Horrible if you're a
side-sleeper, but even if your not, I find that by half-way through the night
my ears don't want anything in them anymore.

The idea is great, but I think that many will find that having plugs in your
ears all night is not comfortable.

~~~
d4n13ll33
This is true for some people but there are a lot of people that do sleep with
earplugs/earbuds in!

I do agree that our idea doesn't work for everyone - people with sensitive
ears aren't going to like it no matter how comfortable we design it! :/

------
bravura
If anyone is looking for mid-price dumb earplugs, I read this article today.

[https://illmethodology.com/2014/11/tried-earplugs-
amazon/](https://illmethodology.com/2014/11/tried-earplugs-amazon/)

TLDR: A working DJ tried all the mid-price dumb earplugs on Amazon, and
recommends EARASERS.

~~~
zensavona
Totally second this - I am not a DJ but I go to a lot of concerts and shows,
these are the best earplugs I've tried for reducing volume while retaining
sounds quality throughout the frequency range.

------
chromakode
For anyone who sleeps on their side, earplugs with plastic extending outside
the ear canal is a very uncomfortable experience. How is this an improvement
over soft foam inserts?

Also, how is this different from using in-ear headphones with Comply tips?
[http://www.complyfoam.com/](http://www.complyfoam.com/)

~~~
d4n13ll33
We've done a lot of tests with the ergonomics of it - even delaying our launch
for a month so that we could iterate more because the side-sleeper comfort
wasn't up to par. it's smaller and rounder than what you see in the video as
we filmed the first half of the video before our final design. ~70% of the
people we had sleep with it for an entire night noted that it was comfortable.
that number will get even better as we implement the inner silicone layer.

the main difference between using in-ear headphones with comply tips is wires.
I've had to used wired for a long time and it was terrible. They'd tangle and
get pulled out of my ear. They'd pull my phone out of the charger. I've even
had my phone run out of battery in the middle of the night because it got
disconnected. When you roll around, wires in bed are not a pleasant
experience. :(

Also, the software built in is very different. Normal earphones don't have our
user-friendly software that has features designed for sleep. I.e. when an
alert sounds on your phone with normal earphones, it sounds in both your
headphones and your phone's speaker - waking up others around you. There might
be some hacked homebrew way of getting some of Hush's software features on
normal earphones but our software makes it easy. :)

~~~
errantspark
So your main selling points versus the competition is lack of wires and ease
of use?

Would you agree if you're not bothered by wires or complexity a pair of active
noise cancelling canalphones with Comply tips will outperform Hush by a wide
margin?

~~~
d4n13ll33
I wouldn't quite say "outperform" as I'm not aware of noise cancelling+foam
tipped IEM's that are comfortable. Someone could very well make their own app
to have the same software features as us, use a very comfortable foam tipped
iem and have a very similar experience if they don't care about the wires! I
do agree with that!

------
chockablock
Very cool product. You can get a similar effect to these isolation+masking
plugs by wearing normal earplugs and then playing loud masking sounds
externally (either over speakers in the same room, or through over-the-ear
headphones).

On planes, for instance, I wear headphones over my earplugs and crank up the
volume to watch movies. It's the poor-man's noise-canceling headphones! If you
can, also turn up the treble to try to flatten out the combined frequency
response of the plugs+phones.

Obviously my hack doesn't solve the same problems this product does, but it's
a trick I've found useful.

~~~
d4n13ll33
Yeah you can! A lot of the people I interviewed actually did that - they'd
wear earplugs and have a sound generator going... Haha. Kind of
counterintuitive since they'd be blocking out the noise masking as well, ha!

That is a good workaround though to get a similar effect! Funny how you tried
to digitally equalize the earplugs low-pass filter, haha

~~~
makeset
I sleep like that, with earplugs and a white noise generator. The frequencies
that make it past the earplugs are the ones you want anyway for blocking other
sounds that make it past, so it's not that counterintuitive. The only sounds
that now interrupt my sleep are low frequencies coming from below, through the
pillow-side ear which doesn't get to hear the sound generator much.

~~~
d4n13ll33
Interesting thought on how the lower frequencies that make it through mask out
that frequency spectrum.

------
errantspark
Doesn't Kickstarter have a policy against using renders?

[https://www.kickstarter.com/rules](https://www.kickstarter.com/rules)

"we prohibit photorealistic renderings."

~~~
d4n13ll33
When I spoke with someone from Kickstarter, they said that it's a safeguard
against 'vaporware.' As long as you show evidence of your actual prototype
(boards, CAD models, etc) and that real engineering is complete, it's fine!

~~~
illicium
So why aren't there photos of your final 1x scale prototype? The evolution pic
is a render, which leads me to believe that engineering challenges will
prevent you going from breadboard to 2x to 1x scale, making this project dead
in the water.

~~~
d4n13ll33
The bottom right picture in the evolution of hush montage is our final 1x
scale prototype. We zoomed a bit but it's much smaller than the prototypes to
the left of it.

------
benjamincburns
Would be nice if I didn't need to download a 2.1 MiB image to view this page.
Could probably keep the visual appeal here without the bloat by simply
switching to JPEG.

Edit:

Also I'm having a hard time understanding your value proposition. Are these
doing some active noise canceling, or are they just simply a bluetooth headset
with semi-decent passive noise suppression?

Also, why would I want these to be connected to my smartphone while I'm
sleeping? Am I going to be woken up by every text/e-mail?

Point being, when I read the copy at the top of your page I instantly think
that your product is going to make my ability to sleep _worse_ rather than
better.

Edit 2:

The rest of the page clears up some of my questions, but I think you'd have a
lower bounce rate if you worked on the headline copy a bit more.

~~~
d4n13ll33
Dang. Thanks for noting that. We'll swap that out :)

They are not doing active noise cancelling - they do passive noise reduction
with an earplug and noise masking using soothing sounds. These are two of the
better noise isolation solutions out there combined into one small package.

You want to be connected to your smartphone so you can hear some of the things
you need to hear - those being an alarm clock, an emergency phone call from
someone important, etc. We have a dashboard so you can control which
notifications you want to be disturbed by.

Hopefully by giving you the control to block out everything and only hear the
things that you ABSOLUTELY need to hear, we can give you a peace of mind to be
able to sleep better

------
d4n13ll33
Developer here! Hoping to get some feedback if possible!

~~~
RickHull
My biggest concern generally is in-ear comfort. Short of molded customs, every
in-ear headphone I've tried causes canal soreness within an hour or two,
including the "sound delivery straw" designs with delicate foam or rubber
surrounds. Secondarily, it looks like the current model sticks out, causing
pressure if one's head is resting on its side.

That said, my ear canal soreness is largely due to canal deformation relating
to jaw movement. Perhaps this is not an issue for sleeping. Also, foam
earplugs (compared to earphones) are not uncomfortable for me.

~~~
d4n13ll33
There are some people that have very differently shaped ears that we simply
can't account for with a single design. Can I ask which part of your ear got
irritated so that I can make a note?

[http://www.rudyard.org/wp-
content/uploads/2013/09/external-e...](http://www.rudyard.org/wp-
content/uploads/2013/09/external-ear-anatomy.jpg)

Was it the tragus?

------
lnanek2
Hmm, I don't really see any benefit over my current solutions. I can wear
cheap foam/silicone ear plugs and just set my alarm louder. Sometimes I just
sleep with small rubber wired ear buds in (not the hard plastic ones) if I
want to listen to audio while going to sleep. Never had any trouble with
either method enough to pay this much. Props to these people if they can
manage to market people into paying that much for not much different than
current solutions, though.

~~~
d4n13ll33
Out of curiosity, which small rubber wired earbuds do you use?

Also, you may have not had trouble with either method but others have. Wires
are pretty dang inconvenient in sleep to not only myself, but a lot of the
people I've interviewed

------
grondilu
Noise cancellation is a big, existing market. If they really have a better
technology to offer, they don't need a Kickstarter.

~~~
d4n13ll33
We're not noise cancellation. We're noise isolation for sleep - something that
investors have told us time and time again that they didn't think people would
pay money for. I think it's a big market and I need Kickstarter to prove it :)

~~~
grondilu
Oh OK, my bad then.

------
serf
seems like it's sure missing the chance at sleep tracking -- a connected
hardware implement that you need to wear while sleeping.

~~~
d4n13ll33
LOL yeah, we decided to take it out of this version to keep the value of it
very clear in "Block out the world. Hear what you need." But that is something
we plan on implementing into V2!

------
moe
And yet another widget that needs to be charged...

What happens when I forget charging?

Will I miss my alarm in the morning or will it wake me up with a low battery
alarm in the middle of the night?

~~~
makeset
I'm going to venture a wild guess that if you forget to charge, it will stop
working, as it's probably not magical.

A low battery alarm would be about the most idiotic feature imaginable for a
sleep aid, so hopefully they won't do that. Probably a blinking light on the
host charger.

------
prteja11
Do these work well on flights? Especially when you are sitting close to the
exit row near the engine(s). OR am i better off buying the Bose Noise
Cancelling headset?

~~~
d4n13ll33
Active noise cancelling is actually more effective if it's the engine drone
that's bothering you! If it's the baby crying next to you, Hush can be more
effective.

------
d4n13ll33
New thread going on at the FP. This one was brought down for a reason unknown
to me as all the traffic was organic! :(

------
fernandotakai
man i so thought this played music, it would be the perfect headset for me. i
like listening to audiobooks before sleeping and every single bt headset i
tried doesn't let me move around while laying down (mostly because the wrap
around the back of my head).

~~~
d4n13ll33
Yeah, we had to limit that because it is first and foremost a noise isolation
device for sleep and we had to have 10 hours of sound generation to be able to
get through the night :( We're considering in V2 to let it be an option to
stream audio for like an hour or so and then autoshutoff! This is our "MVP"

~~~
joshvm
Good. Keep it simple! So many Kickstarters fail because the founders try to
overreach and end up making products that do a mediocre job of their USP and a
worse job of all the tiered extras they throw in. Feature creep will kill you.

~~~
d4n13ll33
Exactly! Thanks for understanding dude!

------
j-conn
What I want are plugs that quiet sounds from within the body / ear canal...

~~~
d4n13ll33
The noise masking we do allows you to mask out the breathing/bodily sounds you
make

------
bingobob
another [http://www.motorola.com/us/accessories-bluetooth-
headsets/Mo...](http://www.motorola.com/us/accessories-bluetooth-
headsets/Moto-Hint/moto-hint-pdp.html)

------
bentcorner
Are the tips replaceable or can the buds be cleaned to remove wax build-up?

~~~
d4n13ll33
They are removable and can be washed under the sink. You can also replace them
when they wear down! We'll keep our foam pieces pretty affordable!

------
boards2x
Find it shameful that even though it seems most of the developers are clearly
non-white (see about-us), they use standard stock images of Caucasians. I
would never buy a product promoted this way.

~~~
boards2x
The Israeli education ministry recently launched a new site, in which they've
used stock photos of, mostly, Nordic looking children and families.

Israel is a melting pot. Eastern Europeans, North African and near eastern
Jews, and recently lots of Russians. None look particularly Nordic or even
European (ie Slavic, Eastern European etc.) , unless they're not Jewish to
begin with (many Russian immigrants, according to Israeli press, are not
Jewish).

You want find many blonde Israelis, except for women who dye their hair
(mostly Russians, but not limited).

So looking at an official site which represents a false idea of who we are as
people, was disturbing, and in deed, people quickly responded and objected to
what was done with tax payers money.

My problem is that using stock images blends and makes real people
transparent, not present.

I understand that this is the easiest option, marketing-wise, but it's
offensive.

There's a flip side too. People that can't connect to promotional material
that misrepresents reality. Weather non-realistic women in fashion media,
removal of diversity from promotional material and so on.

It's just wrong.

Taking a risk here generalizing, but I feel that with Asians it might be even
worst, because of their perceived obsession with "whiteness". It's just
offensive.

------
NicoJuicy
hush.technology , i'll probably never remember the domain...

