fairly persistent rain. down towards the southwest approaches, some areas of blue. this is the area of low pressure rattling off the atlantic, bringing some wet and windy weather gci’oss bringing some wet and windy weather across much of england and wales, particularly tonight. the rain will arrive, pushing north and east, getting into northern ireland and gci’oss getting into northern ireland and across northern england by the end of the night. showers will continue to affect northern parts of scotland and with all the cloud around, the wind and the rain, not particularly cold. temperatures staying in double figures but the winds will be gusty towards the english channel coast, around 45— minute 50 miles for our. —— a5 around 45— minute 50 miles for our. -- 45 to 50 around 45— minute 50 miles for our. —— 45 to 50 mph. the weather will slowly improve with sunny spells breaking through. best of the weather to western areas but if will be showers across north scotland. the rain lingers in the east

midlands, into lincolnshire, could bea midlands, into lincolnshire, could be a miserable day for someone sunday. as that area of low pressure begins to pull away later on sunday, we will get another swathe of strong wind, gusts reaching 45—50 miles per across parts of eastern england. we say goodbye to that area of low pressure and into the new working week, we have another one with a repeat performance. we could see another 70 millimetres of rain over the hills of wales. it has been a wet spell of weather so we could see some localised surface water flooding. across the north of the uk, largely fine with some bright weather and northerly winds making it feel more cool. showers across northern scotland. through the rest of the week it stays pretty u nsettled, of the week it stays pretty unsettled, could turn wet and windy again mid week.

hello, this is bbc news, with shaun ley. the headlines. as conservative mps gather for their party conference, the snp say there could be a confidence vote in the government as early as next week, in an attempt to avoid a no—deal brexit. downing street reacts angrily as borisjohnson is referred to the police watchdog over his links to an american businesswoman when he was mayor of london. the labour leader, jeremy corbyn, promises to replace the government's controversial welfare policy, universal credit, should they get into power. hosts japan make history by beating ireland for the first time, with a stunning 19—12 victory at the rugby world cup. now on bbc news, it's time for click. this week — smash hits, smash hits,

and extreme mic testing. thursday was bbc music day, an annual celebration of the power of music to change lives, with 2000 events across the uk and 100 broadcasts on tv, radio, and digital. but it's important to remember that not everyone experiences sound in the same way. for example, this week is international week of the deaf. so we met twins hermon and heroda berhane. now, they're both deaf, and although they love dancing and they love going to deaf raves, there's obviously a lot about music which they don't

experience — until now. we joined them when they tried on a prototype shirt which can turn music into a whole body experience.

the beautiful rolling hills of the south downs in sussex. something which i'm about to see from a whole new perspective. up there.

i'll be filming myself while i'm up there, but the most important thing for today is this microphone, which i'll be taking up with me. why? tell you what. let's go back to the beginning. if you've ever tried to record sound outside or even if you've tried making a phone call on a breezy day, you will know that wind is the enemy. even the slightest breeze causes turbulence on the mic, which you hear as a pretty deafening roar. now, the best way to solve this problem is to stop the wind from getting to the mic by using a big, soft bit of material like this. something which we in the trade call a fluffy or a dougal — or a dead cat. the bigger the fluffy, the better the wind is blocked out, but there are times when a large microphone just isn't convenient. like, for example, when you're doing back flips through a snowy street or travelling at speed over not

very much snow. energy drink maker and extreme sports nuts red bull wanted to record their athletes up close and personal, so they asked a hearing aid, headphone, and microphone designers jabra to make something small, light, and cable free to stick in places where there's no room for a big fluffy. jabra's research into noise cancellation and sound enhancement goes on here at their headquarters in copenhagen. and this is where the x mic was born. because they need to test their devices in lots of different audio conditions they have different rooms with different acoustic characteristics. this is the anechoic chamber, which is completely acoustically dead. this is the reverb chamber where they test noise cancellations.

and this is the wind tunnel, where we currently have a breeze of two metres per second. but if we increase that to eight metres per second you should start to hear a lot of rumbling on my microphone here, which will be quite unpleasant to listen to. and if we take it all the way up to 15 metres per second, my guess is that you will really struggling to hear what i am saying... inaudible. if we switch to the x mic audio, i'm hoping you should still be able to hear what i'm actually saying. all right. this really is maxing out the wind tunnel and even the prototype x mic is struggling. but, obviously, it's still doing a lot better than our mic. part of the secret is in the soft, fluffy fabric, part is in the round shape which reduces turbulence, and parties in the digital signal processing — dsp — algorithms which subtract the windows from the recording as being made.

what we've done is we've learned through years and years of testing what is wind frequency and what is other sound frequency. and then we set those dsp algorithms to make sure we block out the frequencies that we believe are wind, what frequency range we want to block out and what we want to keep and let through? so the x mic mark i has done 0k, but not brilliantly in the wind tunnel. but how will the mark ii do in the wild? we'll find out a bit later when i can finally get my amateur backside off the hill. hello and welcome to the week in tech. it was the week that facebook said it would not fact check politicians. the social media giants says posts by politicians are newsworthy and should be seen and heard.

amazon announced that alexa will soon be able to bring the voices of samuel ljackson and other celebrities into your home. their speech will be computer—generated based on voice recordings provided by the stars. and the port of antwerp has unveiled a hybrid hydrogen—diesel tugboat to replace the gas—guzzling diesel only ones usually used to guide container ships. remember boston dynamics‘ spot the dog? a bot that can climb hills, pick up objects, and open doors is now available to rent for less than the cost of a car. though you may not be able to use it to do the school run. but he's also shared the headlines this week with the company's gymnast bot. atlas does handstands, rolls, and jumps that could rival an acrobat. and, finally, in other robot news, could these shape shifting creations provide a whole host of useful tasks?

shape bots are controlled by a central computer and camera trackers and hope to protect you from hot drink spills on tabletops, create moving 3—d maps, and more. that's all very well, but i'm still waiting for a robot to be able to just do my laundry and cook dinner. sound is something that's around all of us all the time. when we identify those sounds as signifying danger, we've evolved to recognise those sounds and react to them. in the modern world, we have become ever more used to isolating ourselves from the world around us. for most people, recognising those sounds is something we do every single day, but getting devices to recognise different sounds is something that has traditionally been challenging. now, one uk—based company claims

to have cracked that problem. audio analytic has developed a new technology to recognise a wide range of sounds that can then be used as a trigger for a number of different actions. now, what this technology does is it uses software—based artificial intelligence to identify and recognise everyday sounds. and it can be integrated into a number of products. i'll show you a couple of examples of how it might work. one common application is in headphones. walking down the street for example, there is an angry dog nearby. barking. speaker: caution, there is a dog nearby. increasing transparency. so what it would do in that situation, it would recognise a dog barking, lower the music or cut it out altogether in your headphones and warn you there is a dog nearby. another application it would have is in smart speakers, most of us have these things around the home now, and it can be arranged to listen passively for things

like a baby crying. baby crying. fundamentally, sound recognition is very different from speech recognition, and we have had to come in and solve some of those fundamental differences. baby crying sounds very different to another baby crying. there is a huge diversity from when they are six months old through to when they're two years old. but all of that we refer to as "baby cry", so there is some commonality, and we need to teach those machines that commonality. but as we know, ai can only ever be as good as the training data it works with. so they have to capture these sounds live. naturally, we wanted to witness this first hand. and what better way to start than with a couple of very good dogs. this is an anechoic chamber, or in this case, a semi—anechoic chamber. it is designed to absorb sound. we are here to record these two beauties, hopefully barking on demand. barking.

these waveforms i can see on this screen are the representations of what is coming off the microphones in there. and in the middle is the actual dog bark threshold that the system is listening for. and when it identifies them, you should hear it activate. speaker: hey monty, i can hear you barking. as it is late and you are home alone, i am going to alert your owner, turn on the lights and place onjazz, because i know how much you like it. nice. but dogs, as good as they are, are only the beginning. the space here can be used to record anonymous range of sounds, ranging from the dramatic... siren wails. to the more low—key. bell rings. there is no shortcuts to this, it is literally, you have to have the data set. we have to go and collect all the data, so we have the world's largest collection of audio data, 15 million audio event files, that help us train the technology itself.

and of course we couldn't leave without taking a sledgehammer to some windows. glass smashing. all in the name of technology, of course. that was paul. i'm back at the south downs hills where it's time to test thejabra x mic mk ii, designed to reduce noise in extreme sports and record high quality audio straight onto this tiny device. i am pitting it against the best professional mike we have that is even vaguely portable, in that it cabled to a zoom recorder and stuffed into my pocket. exactly what you don't need in extreme sports. and for a more realistic comparison, i'll also record sound on my phone and my gopro.

now all i have to do is run, run, run like the wind! yeah! laughs. ahh, wow! so we are up, and the wind is definitely blowing in my face. we are flying at about 25mph at the moment, so it's time to see what all the mikes sound like. loud wind try to put your left knee over your right knee, squeezing it round... oh, wow. although you can hear my voice on my phone and the gopro, the wind noise is pretty intrusive. it would certainly blast out the subtleties that jabra was specifically asked to capture. so, how about our high—quality mic with all its cables, versus the relatively small x mic, with no cables and on—board recording?

so at the moment i have no idea what these two microphones are actually recording, but what we'll do when you watch this is we will switch from this normal mic to the jabra x mic... ..and i will guess that you will instantly hear the difference — you should hear something that is a lot clearer, and with very little roar of the wind noise. although my voice is pretty clear in both recordings, the background wind is definitely reduced. so much so in fact that we can hear jess all the way behind me, telling me about paragliding in the himalayas. what is paragliding 12,000 feet like, is it a different experience? yeah, everything isjust a bit more full on in the mountains. wind noise increases. so the developments in the weather, and your understanding the clouds... wind noise cuts out. and just loads of amazing birds, huge, massive vultures and the like. interestingly, the x mic is not

going on general sale. instead, jabra are using it as r&d for its existing, more down—to—earth products. if we can get a microphone to work at 100 kilometres an hour down a ski slope, you can bet that in an office, noisy office, you can make a very good phone call without any noise disturbances. well, i am about to cause a disturbance in this freshly ploughed field. so wish me luck. all right, we are about to land, are we? we are going to come in to land. we will come with nice speed, and like a bird landing on a branch, just before we touch down, i pull the brakes and... yes, yes. i smashed it without smashing it, which is brilliant! easy landing, easy landing, very good. the ziggo dome, amsterdam. performing here is the legendary sir elton john, currently on his farewell tour. but he has added a little something extra to each night and it is called peex.

it is a device that allows you to mix live music as it is being played in front of you. boost the volume of instruments, listen to nothing but elton‘s voice, but how does it work? # benny and thejets... first of all the music is recorded onto peex's system where it breaks down the 95 channels of audio coming from the stage into five different musical categories. those five mixes are then sent all the way here to the back of the hall and sent out again as radio waves by these transmitters. but to make sure that everyone gets a signal, five more transmitters have been permanently installed above the stage. and a tiny microphone on the device listens to what is being played on stage, so it can sync up with the mix that your device is being sent, so when you adjust the levels, it will be in real time.

people have paid a lot of money for concert tickets, and people in the funny seats, if you can give them better quality sound, it will make everybody happy. right, elton is about to start performing. let's see how this thing fares. full band plays. guitar only. keyboard only. drums only. wow. that sounds great. the vocals are crisp, the guitar, you can really hear it, but because i am too close to the stage, i can't really distinguish what i'm hearing on stage and on here with the drums. so what i'm going to do is go to the back of the hall and see how it fares there. it works even better further back from the stage.

to listen to the mix you make, you are given normal earphones instead of noise cancelling, so you don't lose out on hearing the atmosphere too. for people who are hard of hearing, which essentially you do have locations in the concert hall where people can come and hear, this allows them to actually be anywhere in the concert hall. peex is not for everyone. there are people who already have superior sound quality and they do not wish to have it improved, but there are people who want to experience concerts in a different way, so it is really allowing for everyone to opt how they want to experience the concert. and that is what we found. not everyone enjoyed using it. it is an amazing system, and i even let people next to me listen to it, but it is like, you have to be very sure of yourself to use that system as an artist. laughs. the music was very loud, you have to put that even louder, so it's going to be like... like you have nails in your ear.

yeah, it's really good, the sound is really clear, i'm not sure eltonjohn concert is the best concert to use it at because the sound mix is really good here. you heard the atmosphere around you, but in the meantime you are isolated as well. wooo! elton! exactly, like that. so, as innovative as this kit is, it may not be for you. you mayjust want to go to a concert and experience it organically. but having the option to mix your favourite artist while they perform in front of you, this might be a new direction in live music. drums play. 0mar mehtab mixing music with the maestro, brilliant. and that's it for our audio tech special. hope you enjoyed watching and listening to it, and don't forget that throughout the week you can find us on facebook, youtube, instagram and twitter at @bbcclick. thanks for watching and we will see you soon.

touch down, i pull the brakes and we run forward... oh! laughs. i tried running too soon! it is fairto it is fair to say we have had mixed fortu nes it is fair to say we have had mixed fortunes today. some of us saw some glorious sunshine, like this in musselburgh. not 1 million glorious sunshine, like this in musselburgh. not1 million miles away the skies lick different across aberdeenshire. —— looked different. waterlogged roads from the persistently wet weather. this weather front was with us all afternoon. we had a weather front stretching in from merseyside to lincolnshire, also bringing persistent rain. towards the south—west, there is another area of blue, the first sign of the next area of low pressure moving on from

the atlantic. this is going to bring some wet and windy weather across england and well is through this evening and overnight. the rain will move north and east, so we will see some rain getting into northern ireland and across northern england by the end of the night. showers will continue to affect northern parts of scotland. with all the cloud, wind and rain around, it is not cold. temperatures in double figures, and winds will be gusty towards the coast. through sunday, the area of low pressure will move east, so for many of us after a wet start to the day, the weather will improve with some sunny spells breaking through. the best of the sunshine across western areas, but there will be some sunshine across there will be some sunshine across the north and west of scotland. the rain just lingers the north and west of scotland. the rainjust lingers and the north and west of scotland. the rain just lingers and east parts of the midlands, and then to lincolnshire. it could be a miserable day on sunday. as the area of low pressure begins to pull away later on sunday, we get another

swathes of strong winds, with gusts reaching 45 to 55 mph. we say goodbye to that area of low pressure and into the new working week we have another one that will bring repeat performance. some rain building up over the hills of wales on monday, and we could see some localised build—up of flooding as this wet weather continues. there will be a few showers across northern scotland. through the rest of the week, it stays pretty u nsettled of the week, it stays pretty unsettled and could turn wet and windy again midweek.

this is bbc news, the headlines at apm. as conservative mps gather for their party conference, opposition parties consider whether to call a vote of no confidence in the government, in an attempt to avoid a no—deal brexit. meanwhile, downing street reacts angrily, as boris is referred to the police watchdog, over his links to an american businesswoman, when he was mayor of london. the labour leader, jeremy corbyn promises to replace the government's controversial welfare policy, universal credit, should they get into power. renewed pressure on the trump administration, over its dealings with ukraine. the us secretary of state, mike pompeo, is ordered by democrats to turn over documents connected to the impeachment investigation. hong kong police fire water cannon to disperse protestors, holding a rally to mark the fifth anniversary of the pro—democracy umbrella movement.