BARCELONA, Spain—I'll admit to being a little sceptical as I sat down to listen to Noveto's private speaker system.

The current prototype—which is like an old iPod speaker dock of the sort you'd find knocking around the bargain bin of a supermarket in the early '00s—doesn't exactly inspire me with confidence. Neither do the cheesy infomercial-like videos, which highlight the various ways in which having a private speaker—that is, one that only you can hear—might prove useful. And yet, as a focused beam of audio hit my ears with a clarity far richer than the robotic din of the MWC show floor might otherwise allow, it's hard not to be impressed.

Noveto, a small startup from Israel, hopes that its private speaker system might one day eliminate the need for headphones—no wires, no wireless, no nothing, just crystal clear audio. You could imagine a busy office where, instead of having to hold a phone up to your ear to take a call, you could whack it on a private speakerphone, leaving your hands free to take notes. Or, you could play a split-screen game, with each player able to hear a completely unique audio track. Those who struggle with their hearing could have a louder audio beam for themselves.

The company won't reveal the details of how its audio system works, but the idea behind directional speakers isn't new. Indeed, they're often used in commercial installations and in the homes of people who suffer from hearing impairment. They're not even that expensive. A Kickstarter campaign launched way back in 2012 let you pick up a speaker for just £191 (~$269)—and the company, dubbed Soundlazer, still sells them.

Directional audio has been around since the 1960s and works by using a parametric speaker, which focuses audio at high intensity into a small area. Parametric speakers use an ultrasonic wave, which can be far smaller than typical sound waves, as a carrier for the audio. The result is that a listener outside of the beam's narrow target area hears nothing.

What Noveto has done is pair that tech with positional 3D face tracking using cameras. This solves the biggest problem with parametric speakers, which is that if you move outside of the sweet spot, the sound cuts out. By tracking faces, Noveto can change where the beam of audio is aimed or fire out multiple beams to people sitting next to each other on a sofa. It's clever stuff, although the sensation of having audio beamed directly to your ears is a strange one. Where traditional speakers blast out sound waves in all directions and bounce them off other surfaces in the room, a direct beam of audio is weirdly clear, as if the sound sits on top of whatever else is around you.

Unfortunately, I was only able to hear a small snippet of audio during my Noveto demo—and it was just a person speaking, at that. How the tech handles more complex audio like music or video games, particularly their bass frequencies, remains to be seen. There's also the small matter of being able to actually buy Noveto's tech: right now, it's still very much in the prototype stage. And while the company showed me lots of products like soundbars and PC speakers and even phones—the tech can be shrunken down substantially, I'm told—I suspect that the company doesn't plan to build any of them itself.

Indeed, as I was ushered out of my demo, two representatives from LG were being fawned over beside the booth, ready to be brought in for a demo of their own. So while Noveto's own private speaker system won't be on store shelves any time soon, perhaps your next TV will let you sit in your own audio bubble instead.