It can be difficult to hear the chimes and announcements in an airport sometimes. So a team of researchers from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland have come up with a way to make speech blasted over a loudspeaker that's easier to understand from all that background noise. It will also be quieter.

Sounds counterintuitive, but it turns out there are words that were most easily distinguishable in a noisy environment. We tend to pick up hard consonants or the hisses of the letter "s" more easily than softer vowels.

The researchers were able to develop software that enhances recognizable sounds in real time, making announcements and other broadcasts easily understood by people in crowded areas.

[The University of Edinburgh via Gizmag]