An Equalizer for your Ears
Here Active Listening, at first heard
Here Active Listening is a hard product to explain. You see them and you see Bluetooth headphones, and you’ll be right about the former, but wrong about the later. It consists of two small earbuds and an App, the earphones, one for each ear, are disconnected between them. Normally, people express surprise when they find out that the earbuds emit no sound at all. There’s no way to reproduce music or podcasts or any sound through them, while they are awkwardly occupying the space needed for your headphones. ¿What are they good for then?
Examining the Here would give you some clues. The external part of each of the earbuds is a microphone that capture external sound, Here Active Listening can best be explained as a preamp and equalizer for your ears. Once paired with the app you can use your smartphone to adjust how you are listening to the ambient sound. You can raise or lower the volume, change the equalization of frequencies, or presets to hear as if you were in Carnegie Hall or in a small recording studio, or filter noises from crowds, or an office, or a plane.
The buds come in a small case that charges, and the case itself need to be charged from time to time. After charging you need to pair the Here buds with the App. To do this you just place them in a circle inside the application and accept the two prompts accepting the Bluetooth pairing. From then on you can start using the device. Place them in your ear and the first tests will probably surprise and disappoint you as you discover the limits and virtues of the Here.
The virtues will delight you, put music through your external speakers and lower the volume until it becomes inaudible, raise the volume of your Here and it is as if you raised the volume of the music. Use the preset to listen as if you were in a small recording studio and you can hear the difference. Reducing the noise in an office is also very effective. I didn’t have the chance to try them on a plane and compare them with the noise cancelling headphones I normally use.
Unfortunately the limitations are very disappointing. Employees of the manufacturer, Doppler Labs, explain that the Here are not earphones, because it is a Bluetooth Low Energy device, meaning that if they were the battery would not last very much. Some of the filters are not very good, for example the one to use in a car. It’s practically useless to try to use the Here with wind, in a convertible or a bike, since the microphone will pick up too much noise. It’s also impossible to combine different presets and adjustments. Using the High DB limiter in a concert, to avoid the nasty effects of high volume in your ears, together with the crowd noise reduction presets sounds great, but it isn’t possible.
Despite all of this, the Here are brilliant in a concert. Besides the already mentioned High DB limiter, a great feature for those ears at risk, we can simply lower the volume and listening to the music as intended with no distortion. The Here are very effective both to avoid damaging your ears and to help damage ears to hear again, by being able to raise the volume or a using presets to help you hear what you want, human voices, for example.
Here Active Listening is only for sale by getting into a waiting list to become a “pioneer.” Paying $200 to reproduce sound in concerts or other special situations is costly, unless those situations and concerts are frequent or important. The fact that they can’t be used as earphones, and that you can’t use headphones while using the Here, is an extreme limitation in its usefulness. I don’t imagine many people will find this product useful.
