‘Game changing’ headphone start-up Nura raises $1.2 million in crowd-funding

THIS Aussie company has created what some are calling a “game changer”. It’s already broken records — and it hasn’t even launched yet.

Nura headphones listen to your ears to optimise the sound.

A MELBOURNE start-up behind the first pair of headphones that “listens to your ears” has become the most funded Australian campaign ever on crowd-funding platform Kickstarter.

Nura’s headphones, which automatically tune themselves to your ear’s unique “fingerprint”, are being hailed as a “game-changer” in the music industry.

Within two days of launching its Kickstarter campaign, Nura had raised more than $360,000, and that figure has now grown to nearly $1.2 million from more than 4000 backers.

The previous most-funded Aussie Kickstarter was Oi, the “bike bell that doesn’t look like a bike bell”. Only one per cent of projects globally reach more than $US1 million ($1.34 million).

“Music lovers that have listened to albums for 30 years [try them] and say, they didn’t know that instrument was in that track,” co-founder Kyle Slater told news.com.au. “It feels like you’ve just pulled your head out of the water.”

Mr Slater, an engineer with a background in music and hearing science, said he originally came up with the idea by asking the question, “how do you make the perfect headphone?”

“We all hear very differently,” he said. “We look differently, see differently, our fingerprints are different, our ears are no exception.

“At the moment headphones don’t really know anything about who they’re connected to and don’t adapt the sound or match it to the specific needs of the person.”

When someone puts on a pair of Nura headphones for the first time, they listen to a series of sounds for 30 seconds. “We send some tones through the ear and listen to the response, and that response gives us information about how well you heard the sound,” Mr Slater said.

The Kickstarter funds will be used on tooling for mass production at the factory in China, regulatory certifications, sourcing of materials, and distribution.

Mr Slater said the first delivery was planned for April 2017. He confirmed the company had been in talks with larger manufacturers interested in the technology, but the immediate focus was on shipping a product.

“Our first and most important step as a company is to deliver an incredible product to the very first backers of the Kickstarter,” he said. “We're absolutely committed to doing that.”