Nura: Headphones that learn and adapt to your unique hearing
Original Articles from Here
We’re living in a golden age where masterfully crafted, recorded and engineered music is at our fingertips. But the journey of music doesn’t end at the smartphone. The journey completes with you, the listener.
Nura is a new headphone that integrates unique soundwave technology to automatically measure your hearing (from the outer ear all the way to the brain) and adapt music perfectly to you. You don’t need to answer any tests either – just sit back and listen.
In order for headphones to deliver the right sound, they must be matched to the listener. Nura even recognizes you when you put them on.
Did you know that your hearing is as unique as your fingerprint, your face and your voice?
Each of us has different sensitivities to different frequencies of sound. This means the same pair of headphones sound different for each person. And the difference is significant.
How the listening experience can differ between two people
How the listening experience can differ between two people
How do you choose the right pair of headphones when we all hear differently?
Sound and hearing are very hard to objectively self-assess. How do you know what you’re missing? Audiophiles are skilled at the art, but this takes them years of experience.
Nura empowers everyone who loves music to find their perfect sound – automatically. Nura actually knows which sounds are getting through fully and which sounds are not. It uses this information to fill in your musical black spots.
Some headphones sound tinny and lack beat, others have too much bass which drowns out the detail. The acoustic separation of Nura’s design allows for the deepest bass and clearest tones. The over-ear cup delivers bass you can feel through your skin. The earbud prevents the bass from drowning out the detail and delivers crystal clear notes directly into your ear. Your brain combines the sensations into a fully immersive experience – you hear and you feel the music.
With Nura, you can experience the music you love for the first time again. Be immersed in all the beautiful detail and nuance of the recording.
Just like every human face and voice are unique, so too is the structure of everyone’s inner ear. These variations in anatomy result in us hearing sounds differently. There’s a very wide range in our sensitivities to different frequencies – normal hearing range is >20dB at each frequency (that’s about seven clicks on the volume button of a smartphone).
When soundwaves enter your ear canal, they vibrate the eardrum. These vibrations are transferred through a series of small bones to the cochlea – our favorite organ in the body.
The cochlea converts these vibrations to electrical signals which are sent to the brain. Our brain then interprets these signals as sound!
Incredibly, at the same time, signals are also sent back out through the ear creating a very faint sound. Yes, your ears create sound!
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. 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).
The sound that is produced by our ears and detected by our headphones’ internal microphone is encoded with information about how well you actually heard the sound that went in.
Nura headphones connect to your smartphone. 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. Once they know this, they sonically mould to match your ears perfectly and provide rich, balanced sound for you.
Our technology combines deep hearing and neuroscience, psychoacoustics, signal processing and acoustics. Nura does not require you to answer a test. You sit there and listen for 30s. That’s it. The first time you put them on your head, they’ll measure your hearing – a process that takes about 30 seconds. Nura headphones actually know you. Any time you put them on, Nura will recognize you in less than two seconds.
Once Nura identifies you, they load your profile. Any music you listen to (no matter the app) will be optimized for your hearing, so you can hear every note perfectly.
You don’t have to spend countless hours and lots of money to find great audio. It’s not necessary to be a sound expert either (that’s where we come in). Nura is designed for music enthusiasts. So, if you love music keep reading!
We’re hoping to raise $100K with our campaign. The money will be spent on tooling for mass production, regulatory certifications and sourcing of materials
Being a lifelong music lover and engineer, Kyle started systematically looking for the perfect pair of headphones and discovered that headphones are like shoes – perfection depends on who’s wearing them. This led to the realization that headphones need to be able to understand the person’s hearing so that they can adapt and match the listener.
Kyle approached Luke to explore whether it would be possible to squeeze a hearing measurement machine into a pair of headphones and make a closed-loop music experience. They found out it could be done and started working on the core technology to make it possible.
In January of this year, we were accepted into the
We’re now ready to move ahead with manufacturing and plan to start production at the end of 2016. This includes tooling, sourcing and regulatory certifications. Our product will be ready to ship by April 2017.
