Pgr
02-03-2009, 05:32 AM
A friend of mine has a stuttering problem and is currently looking for a particular kind of device to improve his fluency. It's a technique called "Delayed Auditory Feedback" (DAF) which simply consists of repeating the user's voice into his ear with a slight delay (50 to 250 milliseconds). For some reason this helps the user to avoid stammering, with quite miraculous results, for most people.
These devices exist as in-ear hardware, but cost almost $5000. A software for Pocket PC uses the same technique (requires headphones). Of course it's not as convenient, and can be used only occasionally, but it helps sometimes.
There seems to be nothing of the sort for my friend's Palm OS Treo. I was wondering if any of the generous and prolific developers here in 1src would like to venture into writing this app.
The requirements seem to be:
1- getting sound from a microphone, either the built-in phone mic or and external one.
2- filtering that sound to exclude non-voice frequencies.
3- filtering that sound to exclude sounds that are far away, i.e., low intensity.
4- changing the pitch of the resulting sound according to a user-configurable setting. This is called "Frequency Altered Feedback" (FAF), it is a complementary technique that also seems to help.
5- creating a user-configurable delay to the sound
6- outputting it through the phone's speaker or external headphones.
7- Not strictly needed, but a cool idea for a feature: being able to use this during phone calls, by emitting the users DAF/FAF-altered voice on the speaker along with the other caller's voice.
8- Being able to jump to another application (like memopad) while all this is happening, so the user can speak with the aid and follow a text.
Requirements 1, 4, 5 and 6 constitute the essential application.
Requirements 2, 3 and 8 are just nice-to-have additions.
Requirement 7 is probably too hard, forget it.
Examples of such software for Pocket PC can be studied here:
http://www.suggestsoft.com/soft/artefactsoft/pocket-daf-faf-assistant/
http://www.suggestsoft.com/soft/speechgym-labs/speechgym-mobile/
And for Windows, with free trial versions:
http://www.download32.com/daf-faf-assistant-for-windows-i20397.html
I have no idea how hard this is to write, to be honest. But I think it guarantees very thankful and happy users. Sometimes people use these software versions of DAF/FAF as testing grounds to assure that the big $5000 investment for the internal ear hardware is really worth it. But for many others it's the only thing they'll ever have.
Any takers, at least for the simplest version? :)
Thanks in advance!
These devices exist as in-ear hardware, but cost almost $5000. A software for Pocket PC uses the same technique (requires headphones). Of course it's not as convenient, and can be used only occasionally, but it helps sometimes.
There seems to be nothing of the sort for my friend's Palm OS Treo. I was wondering if any of the generous and prolific developers here in 1src would like to venture into writing this app.
The requirements seem to be:
1- getting sound from a microphone, either the built-in phone mic or and external one.
2- filtering that sound to exclude non-voice frequencies.
3- filtering that sound to exclude sounds that are far away, i.e., low intensity.
4- changing the pitch of the resulting sound according to a user-configurable setting. This is called "Frequency Altered Feedback" (FAF), it is a complementary technique that also seems to help.
5- creating a user-configurable delay to the sound
6- outputting it through the phone's speaker or external headphones.
7- Not strictly needed, but a cool idea for a feature: being able to use this during phone calls, by emitting the users DAF/FAF-altered voice on the speaker along with the other caller's voice.
8- Being able to jump to another application (like memopad) while all this is happening, so the user can speak with the aid and follow a text.
Requirements 1, 4, 5 and 6 constitute the essential application.
Requirements 2, 3 and 8 are just nice-to-have additions.
Requirement 7 is probably too hard, forget it.
Examples of such software for Pocket PC can be studied here:
http://www.suggestsoft.com/soft/artefactsoft/pocket-daf-faf-assistant/
http://www.suggestsoft.com/soft/speechgym-labs/speechgym-mobile/
And for Windows, with free trial versions:
http://www.download32.com/daf-faf-assistant-for-windows-i20397.html
I have no idea how hard this is to write, to be honest. But I think it guarantees very thankful and happy users. Sometimes people use these software versions of DAF/FAF as testing grounds to assure that the big $5000 investment for the internal ear hardware is really worth it. But for many others it's the only thing they'll ever have.
Any takers, at least for the simplest version? :)
Thanks in advance!