Here One earbuds combine augmented hearing with wireless earbuds
Wireless earbuds are having a bit of a moment. Everyone from Samsung to Jaybird to Apollo are coming out with earbuds you pop in your ears, no wires required.
But the new Here One earbuds from Doppler Labs have a cool twist -- they augment the sounds around you, in addition to working as standard wireless earbuds.
Doppler Labs' last product, the Here Active Listening earbuds, made their debut at Coachella earlier this year. Those earbuds were designed to augment live listening -- either amplifying or drowning out the sounds around you.
You May Also Like
When I tried the Here Active Listening earlier this year, I liked the concept. A lot. It's very cool to be able to adjust the sounds you hear in real-time, be it live music or reduced the sounds of a subway. But I immediately wanted to take the experience to the next level and also use the earbuds to listen to regular music.
With Here One, that's exactly the idea. Here One works as a bonafide pair of wireless earbuds, but it also works as a way to augment the sounds you hear around you. So you can be on the subway, listening to Spotify -- without having to hear the noise of the train.
Doppler Labs has been working on this project for quite some time -- and the company tells me this sort of product was always what it wanted to do. “This is a mass market product for putting computers in people’s ears,” Noah Kraft, Doppler Labs CEO, told me.
“Our goal has always been to give major tech companies a run for their money.” To do that, Kraft says that Doppler Labs’s overarching vision is to “create the last thing you’ll ever put in your ears.”
How does it work
The wireless smart buds work with an app on your phone. That app can filter out different noises — or enhance others — based on your settings. You can set the app to enhance certain sounds (maybe you need to hear more around you) or filter out stuff like a crying baby or the whir of a subway train.
This is very similar to the Here Active Listening product, but Kraft says the tech is now even more advanced. “The tech got a whole makeover,” Kraft told me. “The old system had buttons and a subway mode that took out frequencies — and it worked — but it was crude and had collateral damage.” The new system uses what Doppler dubs “adaptive filtering” and smart selective listening that can identify and differentiate signals so that you can tune into what you want.
The new system can differentiate between say, a siren and a human voice, and tune out the siren.
You can create a much more customizable personal listening profile, the idea being that what you hear and what a friend hears can be different experiences.
Beyond that, Here One works like any other Bluetooth earbud. It’s a true wireless headphone and you can use it with your phone or with other Bluetooth devices. The augmented component requires an app for its settings — but the tech and processing is all taking place inside the buds themselves.
It has extremely low-latency — which is important in the wireless earbud space.
Here One has built-in microphones too, so it can be used with Siri, Google Now, Alexa and others. Kraft thinks that as the role of virtual assistants grow, Here One will be well positioned to work with those devices as a hands-free companion.
More details
Here One is available for pre-order now and will sell for $300 when it ships this November. There was a waiting list 100,000 people deep for Here Active Listening, but Doppler Labs feels confident it can reach the manufacturing demand for Here One.
Moreover, the company doesn't see itself as a headphone maker. It sees itself making a product akin to an iPhone. A companion always with you.
Battery life is solid at 3-4 hours with streaming (5-6 hours just as augmented aural hearing), and like Here Active Listening, Here One comes with a case that doubles as a charger.
These aren't designed to be worn all the time -- Kraft thinks that time might come in the future, but for now, this isn’t a 24/7 product. “We don’t want to be like Google Glass,” he admitted — and have people freaked out.
The design — which is very similar to the Here Active Listening design — has been beautified, with the additions of metal and some magnets. The product itself is also about 1mm larger — but that’s quite an engineering feat, considering it has a more powerful battery, an extra processor and microphone — as compared to the Here Active Listening buds.
You can pre-order Here One at https://www.hereplus.me.
Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.
Topics Earbuds
