Nuraphone Tailors Music To Your Ears, Setting Itself In A Different Category

Nuraphone, the $400 headphones, puts itself in its own category, and the device will give you an absolutely unique experience.

Right when Nuraphone is put on your ears, you can feel the novelty. Rather than conventional over-ear design, Nuraphone comes with a different appearance; while it’s still over ear, its cups have in-ear tips. There’s more to discuss about this design, but the rest is built quite well: its pads are soft and made of rubber, its band is adjustable and smooth like butter. Instead of a power switch, Nuraphone uses sensor to turn on when it’s put on your head. When you wear it, it will suggest you connect via Bluetooth, download its app and do a listening test that will adjust the sound relying on your own hearing.

The Kickstarted B&B Pure and Beyerdynamic's Aventhoo Wirelss also feature a different way of putting music in your ears, too, yet their test is different. They will play one tone at a time, asks for a press of a button when you hear each tone. Nevertheless, with Nuraphone, the whole process is automated, it plays series of tones within a few minutes while the microphones inside the ear tips detect your eardrum’s vibrations. As the result, it can identify which frequency you are more or less sensitive to, helping it to customize the sound accordingly.

A visual “blob” indicates your listening profile with low tones at 12 o’clock and higher tones when you move around the circle. The blob bleeding outside the circle means that’s the frequency you are sensitive to and vice versa, the blob shifting inward means that’s the frequency you are less sensitive to. These data is stored on the headphones, allowing you to use them on any device with your own sound signature.

Therefore, the headphones offers a frequency response which is remarkably well-balanced: after your listening profile is set up, high frequencies are clear yet not too tiny or sibilant, and the mids are just at the right amount. In terms of bass, Nuraphone comes with an “Immersion Mode” slider, enabling bass reduction or boost according to your taste. Nevertheless, despite that most of the music your hear comes from the in-ear tips, the lowest frequencies come out of the large drivers behind the ear cups, which bring vibration to your outer ears and give you’re a fuller and more natural feeling than wearing a bass-boosted buds.

Besides customizable bass and listening profiles, Nuraphone provides you with touch control, which is also adjustable. If you tap one or two times of the sides of the headphones, it will pause music, skip tracks or turn the volume down or up. However, be careful because you may accidentally invoke this feature. Yet, in the age of AirPods, this feature is something we all want on such high-end wireless headphones. Nuraphone has quite impressive battery life, with a fortnight listening to music through Bluetooth, the battery is still doing well. In case you like a direct connection better, you can get 3.5mm and USB-C cables at $20 each (or $40 for a Lightning cable).

The weakest point of Nuraphone is its lack of comfort. You may not immediately get used to its novel design, you have something in your ears and at the same time pressure on the sides of your ears, and the feeling when you turn your head or open your mouth is off-putting, especially when you bang your head while listening to music. Yet, after some time, you may get used to the ear tips though they’re still not as comfortable as traditional headphones.

About its design, Nuraphone explains this hybrid approach with active noise cancellation on its top gives more isolation compared to both in-ear and over-ear headphones. You definitely hear nothing but music. This design also lets Nuraphone conduct the listening test as well as the Immersion Mode.