Gadgets

Are These the Most Personalize-able Headphones in the World?

Everyone’s ears are different. You perceive sound and music in different ways than I do. You might love your Beats. I hate them. I love my Sony MDRs. You think they sound thin. The only way to find the perfect set of headphones is to audition as many of them as you can. That can take time.

Fixing this problem was the driving force behind developing Audreara headphones. They wanted to make some ‘phones that could adjust to each individual so everyone received optimal sound for their eats.

This was easier said than done. Maybe your ears have been tortured by high volume-assaults in the workplace. Perhaps you were prone to infections as a kid that subtly affected how you perceive high frequencies. Your skull is certainly different from the next person and that affects your hearing. So how did the Audeara people come up with a solution? From New Atlas:

“From what we understand, is that Nura headphones do everything automatically then change the sound for you,” Dr. Fielding explained to a Kickstarter backer. “They do this by bouncing sound waves off your eardrum to use your anatomy to determine your hearing profile. We put the power in your hands and ask you directly – can you hear the beep? The automatic OAE process that Nura use require a strong seal on the eardrum and they use an earbud and over ear setup. We’ve decided to keep things traditional and use a really comfortable over ear design.”

The Audeara test is undertaken on a smart device running an iOS/Android companion app that connects to the headphones over Bluetooth 4.2 and starts talking to the circuit board inside the headphones. A user’s hearing threshold is calculated by gauging responses to tones generated by the headphones across eight, 16 or 32 frequency bands.

The unique hearing profile of an Audeara user is then retained in the headphones, meaning that once it’s set up, listeners can feed in music from any source and the profile will be applied to the signal before it reaches the ears. Audeara says that each ear is tested separately and that multiple user profiles can be stored in each pair of headphones.

They’re not shipping yet, but I can’t wait to try out a pair. Go here to learn more.

 

Alan Cross

is an internationally known broadcaster, interviewer, writer, consultant, blogger and speaker. In his 40+ years in the music business, Alan has interviewed the biggest names in rock, from David Bowie and U2 to Pearl Jam and the Foo Fighters. He’s also known as a musicologist and documentarian through programs like The Ongoing History of New Music.

Alan Cross has 39691 posts and counting. See all posts by Alan Cross

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