What was that again?

How often have you cringed at the sound of someone screaming into a cell phone in a crowded room? The screaming is psychological — although the person at the other end of the line won't be able to hear you any better with all of the ambient noise, people like to hear the sound of their own voices when speaking. SoliCall founder Shaul Simhi probably can't do anything about people's vanity, but what he can do is ensure that the person at the other end of the line can hear you whether you scream or not.

SoliCall has developed a technology that isolates a speaker's voice from surrounding voices and other ambient noise. It then amplifies that voice while reducing the volume of everything else. SoliCall certainly isn't the only company working with this type of technology. Companies such as Aliph have developed Bluetooth headsets that use sensors to isolate a speaker's voice from surrounding noises, and vendors have been tweaking the directional microphone technologies in their devices for years. But SoliCall is the first to incorporate speech recognition technology into its solution.

“The phone doesn't have the ability to differentiate between your voice and someone else's,” Simhi said. Instead of trying to identify the most likely speaker from many surrounding voices, the SoliCall technology is designed to look for a specific speaker's voice and only transmit that voice. “We're redefining the term ‘noise,’” Simhi said. “Everyone and everything that isn't the owner of the phone is considered noise.”

The end result is that anyone besides the phone's owner trying to use the device will find his or her voice canceled out. In a car, a phone on a hands-free kit would zero in only on its owner's voice, no matter how many passengers were chatting in the background.

So far the software has been designed for smartphones using the Linux and Windows Mobile platforms, but Simhi said SoliCall plans to expand into other smartphone operating systems. The company also hopes to land deals with major vendors to incorporate its technology directly into devices.

The software approach gives SoliCall flexibility. While its main function is noise cancellation for voice calls, the software can be integrated with other applications, making SoliCall the first filter used in any number of voice-activated or voice-recognition applications. Network voice-dictation applications or voice-activated dialing could function in noisy environments by applying the SoliCall filter. Ultimately, the filter could be used for security and navigation purposes.

“The industry is doing personalization on every aspect of the phone,” Simhi said. “We have wallpapers, ringtones and customizable portals. Our phones have become miniature computers that tap into our e-mail and stream our content. Ultimately they're the most personal devices we own. Why not allow them to recognize our voices?”