Vive mic input without noise suppression

[EvanBalster]

Hello —

 

We're making SoundSelf, an accessible voice-driven experience for Vive.  The player interacts with the game by making sustained sounds with their voice.  However, Vive's noise suppression algorithm identifies any sustained sound longer than 3/4 of a second as background noise, and attenuates it by 40-60 dB.  Unfortunately, this makes our game unplayable on the Vive platform — the player's input is being deleted.

 

Like other voice-perception technologies, our technology works best with unprocessed audio.  Windows 10 includes a "raw" flag in its audio API for voice recognition applications.  Oculus implements WASAPI raw mode in its mic audio driver, allowing us to easily circumvent noise suppression there.  Vive, however, does not — and I have been unable to find any API call or user-facing option to do so.

 

While I'm very excited to make a product for Vive, our team has made the decision to suspend all development for the platform until this issue can be resolved.

[Professor 3DSound]

Hi Evan,

 

Could you please tell us, at which exact type of the device you want to implement your requirement?

 

 

Best regards,

Prof. 3D Sound

[EvanBalster]

Our product is designed to work with all current OpenVR headsets including Vive and Vive Pro.  The driver for the Vive microphone should implement WASAPI raw mode, or some other method allowing applications to bypass its noise suppression.

[AAAudiooo]

Hi Evan

  Glad to see the response from you, may I know if your content provides the communication function? we may encounter the echo problem if we bypass the noise reduction algorithm. Anyway, we have seen your question and will bring it back for further discussion.

[EvanBalster]

Hello —

 

Pardon the slow reply.  No, our software does not incorporate any voice chat function and all record/replay functions are carefully managed.  Our team is proficient in sound design and DSP, and we can deal with any acoustic echo or feedback-loop issues that arise.

[AAAudiooo]

Hi

We have got the related information internally, and discussed with Ian how we can provide the assistance to you.

[Victor_Kush]

Hello !

We have the exact same problem with our voice-driven game. Currently working with Unity builtin mic function. But if needed we can switch to windows's.
Do you have any new leads to resolve this issue ?

Thank you !

[HackPerception]

@Victor_Kush This sounds like a different issue? 

The OP is talking about how the Vive will mute the mic on his application when the person hums a steady tone. My current understanding is that this is a hardware dependency thing - it's not in software. My understanding is that the audio chips used within Vive hardware has this noise-supression baked in because it prevents a feedback-screech from occurring by causing the system to mute if it detects what it thinks is a feedback echo.

[Victor_Kush]

@VibrantNebula  It's the same problem for sure. When the player sings, and hold the same note, the audio input is muted after less than 1 second.

We still can figure out the note (hertz) a little, but the db level is not consistent. Making our game unable to find out if the player is still singing or not anymore.
Indeed the filtering seems to happens in the headset, I was thinking maybe there could be a way to tell the chip to send raw input.

We intend to showcase in exhibitions, with headphones so we don't need audio feedback filter, and in the case of exhibitions, I suppose we can take some liberty for a laborious solution, as we don't sell or share the game widely.
We could add a wireless microphone taped on the headset, but I was hoping for a better solution.