Wouldn’t you love to focus in on someone in a crowd on your favorite TV show and hear what they’re really saying? That may be possible soon.

Squarehead Technology of Norway is developing the AudioScope, a dish system that will let you acoustically zoom in to someone in a large area and follow them.

Similar to sonar, this device has an array of up to 315 small microphones, each pointing slightly different directions. A wide-angle camera displays the coverage area. A control station takes the camera’s image and lets users choose which area they want to zoom in to while signal processing algorithms lift the sound from that area. The signals from the different microphones are automatically delayed due to sound hitting them at different times so they’ll match up,

Originally designed for TV production, there’s also a version designed for conferences. The entire product line is still in development, but when it’s available, we’ll all have to watch what we say, no matter where we are!