A man hangs his head, his eyes downcast. His mouth is covered by something, but you’re not left with the impression he’s smiling. No, it’s not Nick Offerman wearing a gas mask in HBO’s adaptation of “The Last of Us,” but it is equally dystopian. It’s the first frame of the official promotional video for mutalk, a Bluetooth microphone created by Tokyo-based Shiftall, whose claim “Coming 2023 for US” feels more like a threat than a release date.
The microphone (or muzzle) is contained in a shell which covers the user’s mouth and is specifically designed to muffle their voice for the listening pleasure of others sharing the same physical space. It can be handheld or strapped to the head, and, when paired with a VR headset, you can conveniently give yourself the “Clockwork Orange” treatment without being a nuisance to your sleeping family upstairs or your coworker in the next cube. Or so one imagines.
Unlike other Bluetooth microphones, the mutalk directly comes into contact with the mouth, so it comes with delightful accessories such as a washable moisture cushion that — checks notes — “receives saliva splashes,” according to the official website. Shiftall states that the mutalk can reduce sound by up to 30 db, which sounds like a nice feature until they immediately follow it up with the tagline, “Let’s shout Quietly with mutalk,” making it appear that the target users might be CIA interrogators rather than office workers and gamers.
Who ordered that?
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In 1936, physicists ran an experiment that produced a never-before-seen particle called a “muon” — which no one had predicted or expected to find — leading future Nobel laureate Isidor Isaac Rabi to quip, “Who ordered that?” (via Nature). Mutalk’s debut has left some with that same sense of befuddlement. It certainly didn’t make SlashGear’s Best of CES 2023 list.
There’s no denying that some gamers might get loud from time to time. And the rapid rise in working from home (or from a coffee shop, library, or park for that matter) has led to some interesting challenges which definitely include the ability to capture clear and consistent audio. Perhaps mutalk is the solution, but it’s hard to imagine wearing such a device for a Zoom call with a potential customer or with your boss. And, at least for now, Twitch streamers seem to be doing just fine without it.
For those who can look at the mutalk without an overpowering sense of dread, it has a 3.5 mm stereo jack for earphones (or speakers, but that sort of defeats the purpose). It charges via a USB Type-C port and it has a battery life of 8 hours or more. It weighs about 6.4 oz, which for comparison is about half that of Apple’s new Reality Pro AR headset (via Apple Insider). Mutalk uses Bluetooth 5.1 and is compatible with operating systems as old as Windows 10, macOS v11, iOS 13.4, and Android 10. Whether it’s compatible with humans, though, hasn’t yet been determined.
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Stephania Grumbles