Nuheara IQbuds2MAX earbuds tailor-made for your hearing

Perth-based Nuheara has upped the ante in personalised hearing products, a range in which Australia excels.

Nuheara IQbuds2 MAX personalised hearing buds

Perth-based Nuheara has upped the ante in personalised hearing products, a range in which Australia excels. The market is flooded with headphones and earbuds, but not many offerings give you a hearing test and adjust the audio to deliver the optimal sound at different frequencies.

The sound is boosted at frequencies where your hearing is weakest and softened where hearing is strongest. Nuheara (Perth), Audeara (Brisbane) and Nura do this in various ways.

Over the past week I have been trialling Nuheara’s new IQbuds2MAX earbuds, which the company announced at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas a fortnight ago.

The buds come to market in March.

We’ve seen the basics of Nuheara’s earbuds before, but there’s interesting new technology in this model that adds to the value of this product.

The Nuheara IQbuds2MAX personalised hearing buds.

Set-up is similar to the previous version. You take the earbuds out of their charger case, attach a pair of ear tips that match the size of your ear canal, and pair the buds with your smartphone using the IQbuds app available for iOS and Android. I found pairing through the app to be fast and uncomplicated.

The app’s in-built hearing test establishes what Nuheara calls your Ear ID. The test takes about 10 minutes and involves listening to sounds at different frequencies and volumes for each ear. You press a button on the screen whenever you hear one.

For me there seemed to be long stretches of silence when the app played sound to my right ear. That’s because I can’t hear some higher frequencies in that ear. My left ear is OK. I’m aware of this issue from using mobile phones and Nuheara picked up the problem correctly.

Nuheara’s Ear ID test displays a map of your hearing

The app produces a map of your hearing capabilities that is used to adjust the music volume at various frequencies. When I listen to music with a set of Nuheara buds, I pick up higher frequency sounds in my right ear that previously had been soft or missing.

The app also performs a quick test to ensure the earbuds are properly sealed within your left and right ear canals. The app recommends you use larger ear tips if you can’t hear the special sound. There are four sizes of tips to select from. You get a pack of 10.

The app has other noteworthy functions. The top section of the earbuds have a pressure-sensitive sensor. You use short taps, long taps and double taps to control music and sound. The app lets you choose which functions are ­assigned to these taps.

The functions are volume up/down, next/previous track, play/pause, summon Siri on an iPhone, and remove or restore ambient sound with World off/on. The choice of what functions you ­assign to these taps is yours.

Much of this was available with the previous version. It’s what is next that is different.

Some of the sound presets available through the app.

This year Nuheara introduces a new form of noise cancellation called hybrid active noise cancellation. We’ll see it used by other headphone and earbud manufacturers over time, but Nuheara and a few others have it now.

Manufacturers originally used passive noise cancelling, where headphones would try to physically shut-out surrounding sound by fitting tightly around ears. It was a crude first measure. Then came active noise can­celling, where headphones and earbuds were fitted with a microphone that listened to surrounding noise. The device produced “negative” noise to cancel background sound. It created negative sound with the opposite waveform.

Manufacturers placed this microphone either inside the ear cup (called feedback) or outside it (feedforward). With feedforward, the microphone detects ambient sound before it reaches the ear and compensates for it in advance. This works well for high frequencies but it can’t compensate for stuff-ups in the “anti-noise” production.

Feedback hears the same sound as the wearer, with the anti-noise included, and can fix a faulty signal. But it’s not so great with higher frequencies.

Nuheara’s approach is to have microphones both inside and outside the ear cup to deliver the best of both worlds. The IQbuds2MAX has three microphones overall instead of two previously.

Nuheara’s IQbuds2MAX earbuds.

The app lets you choose between different ambient environments: street, home, office, restaurant, driving and plane. For example, in office mode I can hear conversation and the buds attempt to filter out other ambient noise. Plane mode lowers all ambient noise and works pretty well provided the earbuds are tightly inside your ears. I am writing this review on a plane with the earbuds inserted.

The earbuds attempt to distinguish conversation by separating the noise in front of you from that behind you.

You can tweak each of these settings manually. For example, one setting called SINC turns down noise in loud environments to clarify speech.

In the end you can fine tune the type of sound you want to let in or exclude as you listen to music and speech.

The IQbuds2MAX has a large 9.2mm dynamic driver which among other things improves bass quality and I was impressed at the depth and clarity of the bass generated by these small earbuds. In general music was clear with depth of tone.

Nuheara says the buds are water and sweat resistant although not waterproof. I wouldn’t swim with them but they’ll survive a shower walking in the street.

Nuheara says charging with the magnetic charging case will give you 20 hours of Bluetooth streaming. If you use the earbuds without music to improve your hearing, it pans out to 32 hours.

Earbuds and charging case.

I was impressed with the sound quality, the ability of the buds to compensate for poor hearing in my right ear, and the flexibility available when configuring sound environments (eg planes) and bud control functions.

You also can take calls with the buds inserted.

Nuheara is targeting the mild to moderate hearing loss market with this product, where people have some hearing loss but not enough to warrant professional hearing aids. It is focusing on Australia, Europe and the US markets.

Nuheara says that for the quarter to December 6 last year, which coincided with Black Friday and Cyber Monday, direct to consumer sales amounted to more than $750,000, so the company is onto a good thing.

You can preorder the IQbuds2MAX now ahead of its March release. Price is $499.