Imagine being able enjoy perfect silence whenever you need to make a call to keep things private and not bother the people around you. That’s now a reality with the Silent Mask which was unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
Developed by French start-up Skyted, the Silent Mask is made from the same aerospace and acoustic material used to reduce the sound of jet engines on an aircraft.
It can absorb 80 per cent of the voice vibrations.
So if you’re wanting to conduct a private conversation, mask your voice while playing online games or want to create a better environment for creating audio content, the Silent Mask can help.
Silent Mask would also be useful for people working from home or in a noisy hybrid work set-up.
There is an internal microphone which can connect to a smartphone via a 3.5mm plug so you can have perfectly silent phone calls no matter where you are.
Minutes before we came across Silent Mask, we had to do our tech segment on 2GB, and it was pretty noisy – not the most ideal conditions.
If we were using the Silent Mask, it would have offered silent studio-like conditions.
The idea came from founder and CEO Stephane Hersen who was working at Airbus and imagining 300 passengers attempting in-flight calls at the same time.
He immediately started work on a solution to ensure individual privacy.
Skyted is funded by aerospace and aviation companies including Airbus Dev and is also part of the European Space Agency Accelerator Program which is considering introducing inflight calls.
“My original concept was from a transportation perspective, as I focused on how we could keep the human voice from traveling to keep calls private, silent and confidential,” Hersen says.
“Working in the aviation industry, it was logical to engineer the mask with an aerospace sourced acoustic absorber, so our mask is made of metamaterial, an acoustic liner that has been developed by French DarpaONERA to silence the Jet blast in jet engines.”
“Three years after I began this venture due to the new hybrid work conditions, billions of workers regularly handle calls in noisy, confined and crowded spots.
“All of us have experienced calls in very noisy situations, with a high potential for confidentiality breaches and frequent noise assaults on those around, not to mention competing conference calls even within our own homes.”
* Stephen Fenech travelled to Las Vegas with support from Samsung, LG, Hisense and ASUS.
