These tiny earbuds are the wildest pair of headphones I’ve ever used — here’s what they can do

Business Insider/Jeff Dunn

The Doppler Labs Here One.

The plan is to make headphones smarter. That’s why the headphone jack is dying, and that’s why fully wireless earbuds like Apple’s AirPods are now a thing.

As the smartphone boom fades away, a not-insignificant chunk of the tech world thinks augmented reality will be at least part of What Comes Next. This is why tech people keep talking about Microsoft’s HoloLens, Snap’s Spectacles, Magic Leap, and whatever it is Apple is hyping up despite those gadgets affecting next-to-zero people you know.

All of those are visual, though. If the goal of AR is to make it so you wear the computer, not just hold it in your hands, then you need the sound to go with the sight. And that’s where the smart headphones, or — hold your nose — “hearables,” come in. They’re headphones with computing power, the kind that can modify the world and access info through your ears. The AirPods, while not particularly smart, have shown what the shape (light, easy to wear all day) and interface (using an AI like Siri) of these things might look like.

The Doppler Labs Here One — which started shipping to pre-order customers on Tuesday and will go on sale at Amazon and other retailers in the spring — aren’t full-on “in-ear computers” either. But they do move the “augmented audio” concept further down the road than any pair to date. With a few taps and swipes in their companion app, the Here One earbuds can make the world sound totally different. They are, without doubt, the wildest pair of headphones I’ve ever used.

Yet, in many ways, they’re just like any other AR or VR product released thus far: a much better tech demo than a practical product worth buying. Here’s what I mean.

Like the AirPods, the Here One are a completely wire-free pair of Bluetooth earphones. Unlike the AirPods, they don’t immediately call attention to themselves. They’re on the larger side, but their circular, all-black (or all-white) exterior looks as subdued as these things get.

The Here One earbuds go for a pricey $300 on their own, and while they don’t feel that expensive, they are solidly put together. There’s no metal here, but that’s for the best, since it helps them stay lightweight and comfortable enough to wear for hours at a time.

There is a slight learning curve to putting them on: You have to insert them a certain way, then rotate them back into position, but the companion app does a good job of walking you through the process. Thankfully, these earbuds don’t fall out, and there are six sets of eartips in the box if you need to tinker with the fit, too, which is great.

One specific issue is with the built-in microphones on the outside of the earbuds. Those are needed for the augmented audio tricks that give the Here One their purpose (much more on that in a bit), but so help you if you accidentally cover up the microphones while the earbuds are connected to your phone: Chances are, they’ll unleash a horrible screech of feedback. Not fun!

Also, while this fully-wireless form factor is nice for the gym, there’s too much electronics in the Here One for them to be sweatproof, so you can’t go too hard.

The Here One pair to your device like any other Bluetooth headphone, which isn’t a selling point. Sometimes they hooked up instantly; other times, I had fiddle with them and dig into my phone’s Bluetooth settings. There are no AirPods-style fast pairing tricks here.

Once they are connected, though, the audio doesn’t get too choppy while moving around. I didn’t have many instances of audio breaking up whenever I took my phone in and out of my pocket, for instance. It’s not steadier than Apple’s AirPods or the Bragi Headphone, but it’s not a bother.

I’ll note that Doppler Labs only had the iOS app ready for reviewers, so I was only able to test Here One with an iPhone. There is an Android app, too, but it’ll only support the Samsung Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S7 at first, and it won’t carry the Here One’s full suite of features just yet. Take note, Android owners.

Taken purely as an in-ear headphone, the Here One sound fine. They aren’t really as vibrant or spacious as a $300 headphone should be, but they’re lively.

The Here One earbuds put more emphasis on the bass than anything else, but not to the point of sloppiness. Ultimately, they’re still tiny Bluetooth earphones, so they can only do so much to resolve the finer details of a given track. There’s always a bit of a veil keeping songs from sounding as clear as they could. The best wired pairs perform better at a third of the price. 

That’s a common problem with all fully-wireless earbuds, though. In that context, the Here One are in the upper echelon, with a satisfying sense of fullness and more depth than something like the AirPods. Just remember that sound quality isn’t really what you’re paying for here.

Beyond that, the Here One earbuds do a decent job of isolating outside noise, and they have a simple set of touch controls on each earbud, which let you access Siri (or Google Now), pause tracks, and take calls. They also have the AirPods-like ability to sense when you’ve taken an earbud out and pause whatever you’re playing accordingly. All of that is convenient.

Still, being a headphone isn’t really the point here. The big hook with Here One is that, when paired with its companion app, the earbuds can modify how the world sounds. This manifests itself in a few different ways, all of which are genuinely effective.

Really, the Here One is a cross between a wireless headphone and a lesser kind of hearing aid (more like a personal-sound amplifier, or PSAP), with an easy-to-use app thrown in: You can listen to music regularly, but the earbuds can also augment the audio experience to limit background noise, for example, or boost the volume of people talking to you. 

Doppler Labs has toyed with this idea before — but experimenting with them for the first time is jarring, in a good way.

When you first connect the Here One earbuds to the app, for instance, you get a big dial for what Doppler Labs calls “real-world volume control.” Swipe it up, and everything is heightened. Voices get clearer, the clacks on a keyboard get louder, and the hum of ceiling fans is more present. Crucially, this doesn’t make anything harsher — sounds are just there more.

Swipe the dial all the way down, and all the background noise goes away. The Here One’s noise cancellation is far from perfect — nearby voices and other high pitches can still get through — but it can erase any low-end rumble or idle chatter around you.

The best thing about the Here One is called “layered listening.” This is when the Here One lets in real-world sound alongside your music, allowing you to hear both “streams” clearly at the same time. Doppler Labs pitches this as being like having your own background music, and that’s more or less what it feels like.

You could, say, check out at the convenience store without having to completely pull out your headphones. Or, less nihilistically, you could start up the radio broadcast of whatever sporting event you’re attending without blocking out the live crowd. Or, you could use the earbuds to listen to a podcast and better hear nearby traffic while jogging.

There are already types of headphones that naturally allow you to hear the outside world today, but taken as one piece of the larger overall package, it’s a worthwhile tool to have here.

The Here One also come with a handful of preset “noise filters” that tune the earbuds to cancel and amplify sounds for certain surroundings. These can be hit or miss, but when they work, they do make a difference.

•   A “City” setting, for instance, cuts off wind noise and the buzz of passing cars.

•   A “Restaurant” option focuses on amplifying voices at your table.

•   “Office” kills all low-end chatter.

•   “Noise Mask,” my personal favorite, layers a calming stream of white noise over everything, muting it entirely.

•   The two “Enhance Speech” options are probably the neatest: one amplifies voices in front of you, another does so for voices behind you. It is crazy to tap a button and suddenly hear someone 15 feet away sound like they’re right in front of you.

Each setting does what it sets out to do, but a few options make voices sound overly modulated along the way. That’s just unpleasant.

They’re also brutal in the wind — even with the “City” mode activated, particularly strong breezes can overpower someone talking right next to you. In the right environments, all of these tunings are impressive, but they could still use some polish.

 

Finally, there’s a “live mix” tool, which is the thing I found myself showing off to friends the most. This lets you manually adjust what frequencies you want to emphasize, and add instrument-like effects to whatever’s around you.

So, if you tap the “Echo” button, everything echoes. Hit the “Reverb” setting and everyone sounds like they’re in a long, rusty hallway. Turn on the “Flange” and suddenly it feels like you’ve plugged a guitar amp into your office.

There are others, and they all work as intended. It’s nuts.

If you’re wondering why you’d ever need to do that outside of a concert, though, well, you got me. The big problem with the Here One is that, for as remarkable the tech is within it, very few of its audio-augmenting tricks solve a widespread problem. It is an incredibly neat thing to own, but throwing $300 at something just because it’s “neat” is a tough sell for non-futurists.

Doppler Labs does have some plans to make the Here One more practical. One feature, called “Smart Suggest,” is supposed to let the app tap into your location and the time of day, then serve up a personalized filter for your surroundings. If it sees you’re in a restaurant, for instance, it’ll present that filter automatically. When you head into the office, it’ll change to accommodate that. This could be great, but it won’t be available until a Q2 software update, and it won’t be something for the privacy-conscious either way.

The company is also working on a set of “experiences” built for specific brands and locations. One partnership with the Cleveland Cavaliers, for instance, aims to layer commentary and audio from the players themselves over noise filters specifically tuned for their area. Stuff like this is obviously a massive undertaking for a startup, though.

As for what’s there today, one immediate fix would be to make some sort of control shortcut for the lockscreen. Right now, having to unlock the phone and go into the app whenever you want to change is a chore, even if the app itself is clean. Configuring some sort of filter-switching touch controls would also speed up the process.

Conceptually, the Here One could appeal today to those who want a more functional hearing aid. Unfortunately, the whole experience is undercut by a familiar killer: battery life. The Here One last a little under two hours when streaming music, and about three hours if you stick to noise augmentation. That is poor even when compared to other fully-wireless earbuds.

The lack of longevity is understandable when you consider how much the Here One do in such a small space, but it means you simply cannot use them for the entirety of the social situations where they might come in handy.

The “Airplane” noise filter that cuts out jet engine noise is only worth so much when the earbuds can’t last a whole flight. Layering radio over the sounds of a ball game would be great if the earbuds didn’t die by the fourth quarter. Doppler Labs wants to sell the earbuds to those with mild hearing issues, but it’s hard to imagine anyone wanting to put up with recharging three times a day. 

All of this should be less of an issue once Bluetooth gets its big audio update in the coming months, but that doesn’t help anyone now. Today, the Here One earbuds shouldn’t be your main pair. 

The Here One earbuds are augmented reality for your ears. If so-called hearables ever do take off, this will be one of the landmarks we’ll point back to. They work, and they’re fun. But like every other reality-shifting gadget in existence, they’re a better concept than finished product. It’s a familiar story: Early adopters will enjoy, but everyone else should wait.

Right now, the Here One are stuck somewhere between being a too-complicated hearing aid and an overpriced wireless headphone. Either way, the battery is a bust.

That said, there is potential for the Here One, and Doppler Labs has the power to update most of its problems out of existence. More noise filters — including those for the bus and subway — are already on the way, and the firm is quietly working on a way to translate foreign languages in real time. Its CEO, Noah Kraft, has said he ultimately wants to build an AR audio app platform more than hardware. If people ever accept wearing AR glasses all day, there’ll be ways to integrate there.

At that time, we might be able to address the questions raised by the notion of making headphones — already an antisocial product — an all-day, reality-manipulating affair. 

Fortunately, we don’t have to give buying advice based on what might happen in two years. The Here One deserves praise for pushing headphones into the future, but it can’t help but be a slave to the present.

Read more stories on Business Insider, Malaysian edition of the world’s fastest-growing business and technology news website.

>To continue reading click link or copy paste the links to web server http://ift.tt/2l54pB6

✍ Sumber : ☕ Business Insider


Enjoy and dont forget to 👍 Like & 💕 Share!

r>r>