Don't get me wrong, for those of us who have to use hearing aids this is a godsend, it allows directionality that previously was impossible.
However, for people with "normal" hearing, this will be a step down in usability.
The earlobe is shaped like they are to allow your brain to pickout and isolate sound in three dimensions+. Firstly this is automatic, you've been doing it since before you were born.
Secondly, the design of the era plugs completely remove the "shaping" sound of the earlobe (for want of a better term. This is why stereo records still sound flat, they don't have the extra metadata the deformities of the earlobe provide. hence binaural recordings.)
Yes that means you can remove the background noise completely, and replace it with the "what's in front of you" but that is a 2d (if you're lucky) image, so good luck differentiating between two people close together. Ear plugs _shouldnt_ mess with the "metadata" because they should be in the earcanal. All they are doing is attenuating the signal, not re-writing it.
However I can't state enough how much this is going to improve people who are dependant in earphone's lives. For the rest of us, ear plugs are most likely far superior
+ Experiment: Stereo is sort of 2d. However, its complicated. you can describe a horizontal circle of noise, crudely by altering the two channels. However depth is replaced by loudness. (in the same way size of an object for 2d photos) Now, you know that in real life you can differentiate vertical sounds as well.
edit: ex sound engineer, so none of this is scientific. Please research binaural, and 3D sound. Criticism welcome
I'd argue it depends on the methodology by which they're implementing the technology. They could be using the directionality to amplify the "target" signal and identify the signals that the wearer desires to mute and then run a fast algorithm to reduce that sound.
