Google’s been focused on audio this year, with a number of major developments around voice control, voice-to-text and speech recognition enhancement. Now, the company is making its Sound Amplifier app available to more users with a neat new look.
Sound Amplifier, annouced in February, uses your phone’s microphone and some on-device processing to allow you to hear what’s going on around you more clearly through your headphones. You can use it to focus on conversations in noisy environments or just to amplify the sound your TV is making without waking up your co-habitants. It’s a very useful audio aid and goes to show just how handy those smart devices in our pockets can be.
At the time, Sound Amplifier would only run on Android 9.0 Pie (& it’s preinstalled on Pixel devices), but Google’s today announced that the app can now be used by anyone running Android 6.0 (Marshmallow) or above. That makes the app available to 75% of active devices, a massive boost over ~10%.
Additionally, Sound Amplifier now has a visual indication of what it’s doing – a pleasant green blob in the centre of the screen that moves and changes according to the sounds around you and the enhancements applied to them.
Version 2 of the app hasn’t quite rolled out to the Play Store yet, but it’ll be coming pretty soon. Google is also reaffirming its commitment to the app, promising to bring more enhancements for different sounds and types of hearing.
