# Soft-Constrained Spatially Selective Active Noise Control for Open-fitting Hearables

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.12122 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.12122/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 16 Jul 2025.

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Active noise cancellation on open-ear smart glasses](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.05519/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Recent advances in spatially selective active noise control (SSANC) using multiple microphones have enabled hearables to suppress undesired noise while preserving desired speech from a specific direction. Aiming to achieve minimal speech distortion, a hard constraint has been used in previous work in the optimization problem to compute the control filter. In this work, we propose a soft-constrained SSANC system that uses a frequency-independent parameter to trade off between speech distortion and noise reduction. We derive both time- and frequency-domain formulations, and show that conventional active noise control and hard-constrained SSANC represent two limiting cases of the proposed design. We evaluate the system through simulations using a pair of open-fitting hearables in an anechoic environment with one speech source and two noise sources. The simulation results validate the theoretical derivations and demonstrate that for a broad range of the trade-off parameter, the signal-to-noise ratio and the speech quality and intelligibility in terms of PESQ and ESTOI can be substantially improved compared to the hard-constrained design.