Interesting headphone concept: Nuraphones

https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/10/3/16402996/nuraphones-ship-date-announced-on-sale-nura
 
When you put these headphones on the first time, they administer a hearing test. Then they create an EQ curve to compensate for your ears' response, much like they do with hearing aids. Very interesting concept, but might be a few years before they're practical and affordable. This first iteration will be retailing for 400 bucks.
 

Assuming they get less expensive, I wonder how they would work for tracking. Mine always seem to bleed. Looking at these maybe I'll try earbuds inside of closed backs.

Very interesting Sycraft.
Perhaps it has something to do with this phenomenon:
otoacoustic emissions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otoacoustic_emission#Evoked
 
 

Anyone know of a good online hearing test?

My last hearing test was very similar to this. I am not sure if it is measured by the sound bouncing back or not. What I found interesting is the result which was almost identical to one I had a year before in which I raised my hand when I heard a tone.

For me, headphones like this would me a godsend. Both ears are bad, but very different. My right ear has a severe dip in the 1k zone making conversations a bit difficult. The left ear has extreme tinnitus in the 12k-15k range. Like an ice pick in my brain. It is that range that has complete sound loss. Cymbals aren’t heard. If I rub my fingers together I cannot hear them in the left ear, but that is the ear I rely on for conversations.

I asked Bobby Owsinski about dealing with this situation. He told me many engineers have ear problems but their brains compensate and they do remarkable work. Not so with me.

I want to believe this technology really works.

If the quality of audio matters to you, passive noise cancellation will always be better than active cancellation and They have advanced noise reduction that rival any full-sized Headphones.
 
1. JBL T250SI
2. SKULLCANDY S5LHZ
3. SONY MDR-ZX110

batsbrew
we put a man on the moon in 1969.
 
today, we still cannot afford healthcare.
 
why would you believe in technology at this point?

Putting a single, very small group men on the moon backed by huge government funding....
Healthcare being provided for 300 million Americans and people wanting it backed by gov't funding....
That's clearly my extremely simplified way of putting it but I wouldn't say those are comparable. I'm of the opinion that the technology is certainly there in terms of that issue. But maybe I'm wrong, hah
 
But to reign it back in... These headphones seem like a cool concept, but as with all "cool concepts", it's going to be some years of testing and feedback before the technology reaches its prime and is both simple to use AND effective in its use. The reviewer in the link expounds upon those thoughts a lot, and does a good job of making a non-biased review that gives a sense of what I mean.
 
Again, cool concept! 

I got a chance to demo these at the Ableton Loop conference a couple of months ago... they had a Nura room set up with a bunch of headsets hooked up (via Bluetooth) to iPhones, and some salespeople there to explain the tech, assist with the measurement process (which is actually ridiculously easy and takes less than a minute) and answer questions. 
 
Yes, the measurement process is based on otoacoustic emissions, which is the same technology they use to do hearing tests on babies, who can't tell you what they're hearing (or not hearing). So it's grounded in solid science, you can look it up (or follow the link a few posts back).
 
The sound, once measurement was done, was quite extraordinary. Rich, full, detailed, gorgeous sound from everything I listened to on them - and I checked out a number of things I know really well including some Pink Floyd and a few of my own mixes, which I was able to access since the iPhones were running Tidal. I was *extremely* impressed. I literally didn't want to stop listening to them. 
 
The product also seems remarkably solid in terms of comfort, design and manufacturing quality, especially for a 1.0 product from a brand new company. They've got a lot of things very right with them, which helps justify the relatively high cost - though they're not ridiculous compared to anything that can reasonably be considered competition. 
 
If you read a few reviews you'll probably hear similar reports, and you may also hear my one misgiving about the whole experience - which is that if you turn the personal processing off, to hear the 'vanilla' sound of the phones, they sound remarkably bad - like, every bit as bad as the processed sound is good. Since this functionality - turning the processing off - is always there, despite the fact that if you heard the sound without you would honestly never, ever want to hear anything that way again, it's extremely tempting to conclude that they've deliberately made it sound crappy to help market them in test settings like the one I was in - which seems to be the main way they are marketing the product. If so, it's smart, but seems a bit sneaky. 
 
On the other hand they also let you try out the profiles of the last few people who've done the test, so you can also hear what the system would be playing for them - and that just sounded WEIRD - not bad in the same way that the 'vanilla' sound was bad, but distinctly *off* - which does tend to support the theory that yes, hearing really is that individual.
 
And who knows, *maybe* something about the technology requires that the unprocessed sound be like that, I don't know, but it just struck me as odd, since the next day for reference I went and demo'd a pair of high-end Bose noise-cancelling phones, which of course are designed to sound good to everybody and aren't performing any individual testing/processing magic, and they also sounded great to me - as, of course, do my old standby Beyer 990's here in the studio. So it's a bit mystifying. 
 
Anyway, I encourage anyone to give the Nuras a test drive if you find yourself with the opportunity. I didn't end up buying them (yet) as I'm not swimming in money at the moment, but I was genuinely impressed and the 20% off coupon they gave me for doing the test was seriously tempting. It says it expires within 10 days, but I haven't tested this.