Wearing headphones at a concert is music to your ears with this app - CNET

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I love live music. Hearing music played by talented musicians is...wow, I wish that guy in front of me would stop talking. Anyway, to catch the nuances of your favourite...blimey, the acoustics on this side of the room are awful. Right, as I was saying...what? I said, AS I WAS SAYING...forget it, it's too loud in here.

Yes, there's a lot that can go wrong at a live concert. But French startup Augmented Acoustics thinks it can solve those problems and help you enjoy your favourite music the way it was meant to be heard, provided you're prepared to wear headphones at the concert.

I asked the monsieurs and madames from Augmented Acoustics to explain the benefits when I met them at 4 Years from Now, a startup showcase held at technology trade show Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

You're at a concert. On stage the musicians are playing their hearts out. The music is picked up by the mics on stage and fed into the mixing desk for the sound engineer to balance the sound that comes out of the speakers. And at the same time, that pure, balanced performance from the stage is broadcast to a small device called a Peeble you're wearing around your neck.

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Plug some Bose headphones into your Peeble and you can enjoy the performance as it's played without worrying about people talking around you or poor sound in the venue. It's great for picking up delicate whispers and nuances that could be lost in the crowd noise, especially for the hearing-impaired. And it's especially useful at festivals, where you can hear the same whether you're slap bang next to the speakers at the heart of the moshpit or sprawled in decadent luxury at the back of the field. In fact, you could even listen to music from the festival's other stages without ever having to move.