You’re working from home, listening to an embarrassing pop playlist while you work. Suddenly, your boss requests a video chat. Do you panic and turn off Spotify? Two years ago, for sure. But not now.
You’re probably used to thinking about AI, whether it’s AI art or chatbots, or how it blurs or filters the background in your video calls in Teams or Zoom. But AI audio filtering is now so sophisticated that you can literally play music in the background and your laptop will completely filter out your music for you. I tested it to make sure.
You are probably not aware of this. Because it’s not you who hears your voice, it’s the people you’re talking to. Also, you shouldn’t expect the same experience on every laptop. But at least this is a feature worth considering. You might be surprised at how good it is!
Test AI noise filtering
At CES, Intel provided reporters with a sample of the Asus ZenBook 14 OLED, which our Swedish representative reviewed last December. This product is notable for its gorgeous OLED screen (the best screensaver in the industry in my book), decent weight, and of course, Intel’s Core Ultra 7 155H processor and integrated AI NPU. We’ve been quite critical of the marketing hype surrounding NPUs, as most AI uses CPUs or GPUs instead. However, the NPU seems to be used very effectively here.
Even after my editor decided to stick with the existing ZenBook 14 review, I couldn’t resist playing with the laptop. Within his integrated MyAsus app, we found a variety of fun options, including fan speed control, a “hibernation helper,” a volume booster, OLED anti-flicker dimming, and other really cool stuff. moreover, Five AI audio modes to choose from. They were worth a try!
Mark Hackman / IDG
So I started experimenting with different combinations during my lunch break. I wanted to see if I could completely filter the music on my laptop while playing music from my phone or speakers as his background music so he wouldn’t know it was me listening to the music and not the listener. It is. (I don’t actually do this because I think it’s unprofessional, but we’re talking science here.)
I decided to use Windows’ own sound recorder to record a sample and use some audio samples as evidence. I used the sample Alisia Beats’ Titanium from Pixabay’s free music selection as my background track, playing it on my phone in different locations near my laptop. I then recorded my voice through the ZenBook14 OLED’s built-in microphone and his AI filtering. (I also used copyrighted music with vocals to reaffirm my experience. I won’t publish it here to allay copyright concerns.)
All of these files were recorded in FLAC lossless format with the recommended “High” quality setting. For maximum effect, we recommend increasing the volume on your phone or PC.
You can play each track to see what the laptop “hears”. This is the basic track I’m talking about with all AI filtering turned off and in “Authentic” recording mode.
Next, I turned on 360-degree recording mode, which was the first AI filtering option I tried. If you expected audio (including music) to come in from everywhere around me, you’d be right. However, the apparent volume of the music will be slightly reduced.
The ZenBook’s AI audio gives equal weight to my voice and background music, but that’s not always the case.
Next, I tried a directional audio filter. This should focus on any sounds that occur on the front of the laptop, basically me.
This sample shows one interesting thing I noticed. In many cases, AI filtering does a good job of distinguishing between the music and my voice and chooses to remove the background music. Here you will notice that there are problems here and there and my voice and the music are mixed up. By the way, if I put my phone behind me (like when I’m listening to music while working), it had little effect in terms of filtering. That’s not shown here.
This was also evident when I played some white noise recordings from Spotify. The AI filter kicked in when I stopped speaking, but I “spoke” in a hissing whisper like rain.
But then I tried the AI conference filter. Wow. It works! It actually works!
When I set the “Meeting AI Noise Canceling” mode, the background music disappeared. completely. My voice sounds a little distorted, but other than that it’s fine. By the way, it doesn’t seem to matter when I play rock music, ambient noise, or his Alisia Beats track above. The AI filtered them all out perfectly.
I also trained the AI to optimize for just my voice and then recorded the track. This required reading several phrases over and over until the AI established a model of my voice. (This is the “Voice Identification” option in the “Meeting AI Noise Cancellation” option above.)
Surprisingly, there didn’t seem to be any difference and my voice even sounded a little worse to my ears. The multi-speaker mode in the Conference AI noise cancellation option didn’t really do anything either.
For brevity, we only included “voice identification” recordings. Multispeaker mode was virtually the same.
AI Noise Filtering: What We Know
So what’s going on here?
Microsoft and its PC partners seem to prefer using the NPU for AI, such as filtering in Windows Studio Effects, which debuted on Microsoft’s Surface Pro 9 ARM version. To prove it, I opened Windows Task Manager on the ZenBook and found that the time required to filter the audio in my last test was a fraction of the NPU’s available performance.
Mark Hackman / IDG
Use Windows Studio effects to blur the background or automatically “frame” your face in the center of the camera in Teams calls. These features can be turned on or off, but Windows Studio Effects also uses AI audio filtering (which doesn’t seem to be adjustable) to improve audio quality. I tried reproducing the above test on a Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio 2, which also includes AI filtering, and the Asus ZenBook performed much better.
However, in the case of ZenBook, Intel has also stepped in to help. The ZenBook 14 OLED is an “Evo Edition” laptop. This means that Intel engineers worked with his Asus to tailor the experience. For example, Windows reports that the laptop’s microphone is powered by “Intel Smart Sound Technology for Digital Microphones.” It is unclear whether Intel, Microsoft or Asus itself is offering AI Smart here.
Well, we don’t know exactly which company supplied which part of the AI powering the Asus ZenBook 14 OLED. But we don’t really care either.
Would a laptop like this be able to filter out a crying baby or an embarrassing fight between toddlers? I honestly don’t know. But there’s one thing I know about him. can This is a great tangible benefit of running AI on your laptop, and a good reason to consider purchasing an AI PC.
