NURA headphones kickstarter

"
Nura: Headphones that learn and adapt to your unique hearing"

Huh.... Looks like this could be pretty neat if it delivers:



Interesting. I had a Samsung S4 that could create a headphone profile based on user feedback. I guess the fact that the profiles are stored on the listening device itself and not what is producing the audio is cool? And I recoil at the earbud thing (I have never found them comfortable). But, there's nothing wrong with trying something a little different. Proof will be in the pudding I guess.
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Austin
 
I'm curious/skeptical:

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.

That's just not possible without invasive surgical inplants.
And an earbud, AND overear cups. How can that be confortable?

Not to mention that they are then adapting something that is different from real life?
I mean, maybe I hear better at say 2000 Hz than somebody else, but i'm used to that, right?

Regards,
Marco
 
It's an interesting idea. My current preference is to go with custom-molded in-ear drivers. They're so comfortable that I forget they're even in my ears. They are triple-driver, so I'm getting a very balanced and clear signal, and because they're molded to my ear canals, I get around 20 dB of isolation. I know I have some hearing loss from 35 years of playing professionally, so when I got my in-ear molds, I had the audiologist perform a frequency test. I'm lucky that my hearing is still pretty good, but it's definitely not perfect! So I took the detection curve from my test, and inverted it. That became my adjustment EQ to return to flat response, which I programmed into my in-ear transmitter as a baseline. Then I created a few "adjusted" curves for specific applications.

When I play live, my AxeFX is feeding my in-ears and I (generally) use the flat EQ setting.

It seems like quite a challenge for any set of headphones to adjust to an individual's hearing curve. I don't imagine it's "automatic"; as noted above, that would require some means of measuring the ear->brain impulses. I would expect they might have an application that you use with the headphones, to do a similar frequency detection test to the one I described. Then you could apply that reverse curve to the headphones, to achieve a neutral response.
 
The science seems really interesting. Does that mean that it could also possibly compensate for head and sinus congestion. Allergies make my head and ears plug up like crazy sometimes, causing everything to sound slightly muffled. I also wonder how tinnitus plays into that as well. Cool idea. I'm leery of the buds+cans design in terms of comfort, but would have to try them on to know for sure.
 
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