For some, finding just the right headphones is an endless struggle and countless manufacturers claim to be able to end this struggle with one fell swoop of your credit card, but even if you fork out hundreds for great quality headphones, they’re not just for you.
Everyone hears differently and your hearing is as unique as your fingerprint, your face, or your voice. We all have different sensitivities to different frequencies of sound thanks to our individual genetics and our personal experiences with sound.
This means that a great pair of headphones for one person may not be optimal for another. This is where Nura would like to come in. They’re an Australian start-up who are attempting to get their adaptive headphones funded via Kickstarter.
At the time of writing, Nura have raised $60,310 with an incredible 59 days still left to go on their campaign. So what are Nura doing that people are so willing to fork over $179 for? Like we said, they’re making fully adaptive headphones.
Right, right, what does that mean? Well, amazingly, Nura claim their headphones come with a special combined in-ear and over-ear design that automatically tunes to your unique “hearing profile” within 30 seconds. In other words, they scan how each wearer hears.
“Nura uses a microphone to know exactly what sound went in, and also uses the same microphone to listen to the faint sounds that return from the ear,” they write. “This makes Nura very different from any other type of calibration.”
“It actually knows the response of the inner ear. The inner ear detection is performed using an adaption of OAE (otoacoustic emission) – an amazing phenomenon well known in biology.” The headphones then code this information and optimise themselves for your hearing.
“You press go, and they sweep through a bunch of tones for about 30 seconds. At the same time, they listen to the sounds your ear is making. By processing these signals it works out how well specific frequencies of sound got through to your brain,” they write.
It all sounds a little freaky and we don’t know just how accurate the “hearing profile” would be, but those who’ve used the prototype headphones have responded with glowing reviews. So pretty soon we’ll be able to do the audio equivalent of putting on someone’s glasses see how bad their eyesight is.
