What’s the hottest new consumer technology? Helicopter drone video. What’s the worst thing about helicopter drone video? That droning sound. (Or no sound at all.) Imagine…
- A drone-mounted mic that cancels the propeller sound, producing pristine soundtracks
- A ring of drone-mounted speakers that follow you around, for mobile surround sound (“wingtones”)
- An app that synthesizes music from silent drone video
More practically, future noise cancellation algorithms will offer numerous opportunities for adding sound and music to previously hostile environments. What are some scenarios that would encourage that development?

3 thoughts on “That Droning Sound”
David – do you have any sound examples you can share with us?
I’d love to see what iZotope RX can do /today/ to address this!
Heh. Search YouTube for “quadcopter audio.” Here’s one of the first I found:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iO1ReWWPBxA
This one has some crunchy distortion as well:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lu9wh7IKkc
Good topic!
The Lily camera drone ( https://www.lily.camera/ ) has a nice solve. Their drone films and follows the user by way of a wrist-worn tracker with a built in microphone. The system records the sound of the user in first person perspective, while filming them from the drone in third person perspective. The combination works fairly well.
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