Aspects of the present disclosure provide a system for selectively outputting indications of important events of which the user would like to be notified. Based, at least in part, on settings configured via user inputs, the system receives an indication of a detected acoustic event and determines whether the acoustic event corresponds an event in a list of preferences stored in a remote server. In response to determining that the events match, the system then instructs a personal audio output device to output an indication of the detected acoustic event to the user of the personal audio output device.