The Nura headphones were funded on Kickstarter last year, surpassing a $100,000 goal and earning around $1.8 million from backers who were interested in the device's personal music calibration abilities. Today, the company is officially launching the $399 "Nuraphone" to backers from the Kickstarter campaign and to any new buyer through its website, with a pair of headphones that use a self-learning engine to automatically adjust to your own "unique hearing" and ensure each song you listen to is the highest quality possible (via The Verge).

Nuraphone plays a range of tones into your ear, measuring a faint sound that your ear generates in response to the tones, and this process begins the calibration of the headphones to your own profile. The returning sound is "encoded" with data about how well you heard the noise that entered your ear, with the device's self-learning engine analyzing the information and creating a custom "hearing profile" with a unique color and shape. All of this happens in approximately 60 seconds.

nuraphone 3


Once your hearing profile is in shape, Nuraphone filters all music playback through your profile settings to "sonically mold" and adjust songs and deliver a greater degree of detail. Nura CEO Kyle Slater told The Verge that the Nuraphone is meant to "do for your ears what glasses do for your eyes."

Kyle Slater, Nura’s CEO, compares what the Nuraphones do for your ears to what glasses do for your eyes. They’re supposed to figure out which frequencies of sound you’re good at and not so good at hearing, and then mess with the amplification so that you hear every song precisely how it was mixed. “We assume that we all hear the same,” Slater says. “Hearing offers no point of comparison like vision does.” Our hearing gradually degrades as we age (and listen to loud music...), so it’s reasonable to think a lot of people could use this

Once connected to an iPhone or Android smartphone through Bluetooth (the headphones also support Lightning, USB-C, micro-USB, and 3.5mm analog cables), Nuraphone can begin playing and adjusting songs to your hearing profile. Nura has decided to use a proprietary charging cable, meaning to use any of these wired connections you'll have to buy extra accessories from the company (one USB cable is included in the box).

nuraphone 1
The headphone's design is that of an over-ear headphone mixed with in-ear buds, and on the outside there is a programmable touch panel for controlling features like playing and pausing songs.

A few sites have gotten to go hands-on and review Nuraphone, mostly coming to the consensus that Nura has taken a unique approach to designing headphones and providing a new user experience, but the first iteration of the product is still lacking. The Verge pointed out that someone with hearing issues could see great benefits from using Nuraphone, "but the end result isn't as revolutionary as the general idea."

But my initial impression is that the sound improvement isn’t night and day over other pricey headphones. Maybe the difference would be larger for someone who Nura detected more hearing issues with — though there’s no way of telling whether Nura is doing a little or a lot for me. (I tried listening to high-pitched sounds that I can’t or can barely hear, but Nura didn’t seem to help me hear them substantially better.) I like the effect the headphones create when playing music, but the end result isn’t as revolutionary as the general idea.

TechRadar mentioned that the fundamentals for a quality set of headphones are there, but the "benefits of sound personalization are subtle" and the user experience is sometimes "over complicated." Despite a few design quirks, Engadget called the headphones "impressive" and "polished," saying that that they will "likely only get better" through software updates.

Nuraphone is available to purchase today on Nura's website for $399, including a case for the headphones and a USB charging cable.

Top Rated Comments

thisisnotmyname Avatar
78 months ago
What does their proprietary cable bring to the table other than revenue stream?
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
whyamihere Avatar
78 months ago
Personally I hate any in-ear buds/phones; so am unlikely to try these.
Exactly! My gf hates in-ears, and I hate over the ear cans (I get hot ears). Not sure they thought that one through.
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Nunyabinez Avatar
78 months ago
Every time I hear the phrase "The way the artist intended it to sound" or "how it was mixed" in this case, I have to laugh.

As a former musician and studio engineer, I can tell you that the mixing process is one where many compromises are made so that "on average" it will sound balanced on the wide range of equipment that it will be listened to on.

These phrases assume that that an artist is expecting it to sound exactly one way. A majority of albums have been mixed on Yamaha NS-10s which are extremely flat, but horrible sounding. After we would get a mix the artist always wants to hear it on the huge monitors, which are not flat because they sound awesome.

I don't want a flat experience, I want something that makes the music sound good and punchy when I'm listening for enjoyment. Not a flat experience like I would have in front of a mixing console.
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)

Popular Stories

Apple WWDC23 macOS Sonoma hero

macOS Sonoma Launching This Week With These New Features

Sunday September 24, 2023 12:45 pm PDT by
Apple previously announced that macOS Sonoma will be released this Tuesday, September 26. The free software update includes many new features and changes for the Mac, including the five that we have highlighted below. In addition to these five features, we have shared the full release notes for macOS Sonoma below for a complete overview of everything new. Desktop Widgets macOS Sonoma...
iPhone 16 Mock Header With Dynamic Island

Skipping the iPhone 15 Pro? Here's What's Rumored for iPhone 16 Pro

Friday September 22, 2023 9:29 am PDT by
Are you skipping the iPhone 15 Pro and waiting another year to upgrade? If so, we already have some iPhone 16 Pro rumors for you. Below, we recap new features rumored for the iPhone 16 Pro models so far:Larger displays: The iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max will be equipped with larger 6.3-inch and 6.9-inch displays, respectively, according to Ross Young, CEO of Display Supply Chain...
iPhone 16 Side Feature

iPhone 16 to Include an Additional Capacitive 'Capture' Button

Monday September 25, 2023 12:50 pm PDT by
The iPhone 16 series is expected to gain an additional capacitive button, known internally as the "Capture Button." Codenamed "Project Nova," the button is likely to be one of the main selling points of the iPhone 16 lineup, assuming it gets past the initial testing phase. The Capture Button is located on the same side as the Power button, only positioned slightly lower - where the mmWave cutout...
ipad mini blue

Apple to Launch iPad Mini 7 Later This Year, Industry Report Suggests

Monday September 25, 2023 3:16 am PDT by
Apple could be preparing to release a seventh-generation iPad mini before the end of the year, based on a new report by DigiTimes. In an article discussing stagnating global tablet demand in the second half of 2023, the Taiwan-based outlet forecasts an uptick in Apple's share of the market owing to orders for a "small-size" iPad in the fourth quarter. From the report (see bold): In the...