Scientists develop new noise-cancelling app which can block out 'selected' sounds while allowing others through

There may be times in life when you just want to block out the sound of your partner for half an hour.

Or maybe you hate the sound of your vacuum cleaner as you give your house a once-over. Now scientists have developed an app that, if used alongside noise-cancelling headphones, can 'filter out' certain sounds while allowing other ones through.

The algorithm can be programmed to block out all noise except specific sounds, such as a baby crying. The headphones stream audio to a smartphone, where a system processes them at high speed.

The app then only allows 'selected' noise to be played back – all in less than a hundredth of a second. Tests in offices, streets and parks showed it was able to extract sirens, bird chirps and alarms while removing all other real-world noise. In one demonstration, a researcher was able to drown out the noise of their vacuum cleaner while still being able to hear a knock at the door.

Scientists have developed an app that, if used alongside noise-cancelling headphones, can 'filter out' certain sounds while allowing other ones through (Stock photo) 

Maybe you hate the sound of your vacuum cleaner as you give your house a once-over (Stock photo) 

The team at the University of Washington said there were cases where the system struggled to distinguish between similar sounds, such as vocal music and speech. 

But they hope that training their model with more data might improve this, and plan to release a commercial version to be used with standard noise-cancelling headphones.

Professor Shyam Gollakota, author of the study presented at the User Interface Software and Technology Symposium in San Francisco, said he would use the technology to listen to nature in a park while 'suppressing the chatter of people or traffic'.