Listening to your tunes, but your neighbor is feeling chatty? Ordering a latte but your hands are full so you can't pause your podcast? Conversation detection, a feature on some headphones and earphones, can be a game-changer. Instead of removing your active noise-canceling earbuds or using your hands to pause the audio, this handy feature detects voices, pauses the audio and turns off the noise canceling.
That seamlessness between the cozy comfort of noise cancellation and the bustling real world is extremely helpful and easy to set up. There are, however, a few important things to note for the best experience with automatic conversation detection.
Most noise-canceling earbuds, including those from Bose and many other manufacturers, have a mode called Aware, Awareness or Transparency. This boosts ambient sound, often in the vocal frequency ranges. What I'm talking about here is a detection feature that makes switching to this mode automatic instead of having to manually select it.
You'll generally see this feature on flagship headphones from Apple, Sony, Google and Samsung. Each one calls it something slightly different: Apple has Conversation Awareness, Samsung has Voice Detect, Google has Conversation Detection and Sony's got Speak-to-Chat.
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How it works
Screenshots by Mike Kobrin/CNET
Enable
Conversation modes are generally accessible in the settings for your headphone's companion app. If your phone and headphones are both Apple or both Google, go into the phone's settings and access this feature by tapping on your headphones. Always be sure to update all of your devices' firmware. Apple iOS also provides access to Conversation Awareness via the Control Center that appears when you swipe down from the top of the screen.
Detect
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