Nura claims an audio first with its NuraTrue Pro earbuds
Melbourne based Nura says it has made 95 per cent of earbuds obsolete. Its NuraTrue Pro earbuds offer Bluetooth streamed lossless audio.
Melbourne-based Nura claims it has made 95 per cent of earbuds obsolete. It’s a big call by Nura, one of several Australian firms known for producing “hearables”.
These are specialised earbuds that create personalised hearing profiles of users to compensate for their hearing foibles. They target wearers who need some help listening to music and making audio calls, yet don’t need expensive hearing aids.
Another two firms are Perth-based Nuheara and Brisbane’s Audeara. Each has carved a unique path. Audeara provides noise cancelling headphones for NDIS participants. Nuheara is making strides in the US, seeking FDA approval for specialised retail, and striking a trademark deal with HP.
Nura meanwhile has gone back to crowdsourcing site kickstarter.com, where it successfully began its journey, to promote its NuraTrue Pro earbuds. They will sell from October.
This latest kickstarter fundraising has been a massive success with Nura raising more than $2.5m for the project, a figure more than 80 times what it sought to raise. It mirrors the original success of Nura in 2017 when it raised $1.8m from Kickstarter, at that time the largest in Australian history.
You can order the NuraTrue Pro at a 33 per cent discount on Nura’s kickstarter site if you are fast enough – the campaign ends at 9.35pm on July 28. Then you’ll have to buy them from Nura directly, Amazon and JB Hi-Fi at a higher price.
It’s the NuraTrue Pro’s features that make it stand out. And it starts with CD-quality lossless audio streaming over Bluetooth. Nura is ahead in the game with Apple yet to offer lossless streaming via Bluetooth.
Nura achieves the feat using the lossless Qualcomm aptX HD audio codec that supports 16-bit, 44.1 kHz CD-quality audio playback together with Bluetooth 5.3 on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 platform.
But this presents a problem for now. At the time of writing, Australian smartphones are yet to support this platform.
Nura says the Asus ROG Phone 6 and Xiaomi 12s Ultra do support this, but activated units are available only in China.
For now, I downloaded the Tidal app to listen as best I could to music rated as lossless 16-bit 44.1 kHz sound quality. The NuraTrue Pro response was clear and strong, but boomy.
Getting started with the NuraTrue Pro is fascinating. You first register your NuraTrue Pro buds with the Nura app which checks whether the buds are effectively sealed around your ears. This is necessary for adaptive noise cancellation.
The app then performs a hearing test. It plays R2D2-style sounds and uses microphones in the earbuds to detect the resulting sound relayed by auditory hair cells in the inner ear. It does this without your active participation in the test. That’s really clever.
From then on, the app uses your personal sound profile to modify output to compensate for your hearing quirks.
You can tweak the sound further using the app’s graphic equaliser.
These earbuds also deliver a form of spatial audio. However NuraTrue Pro’s version of spatial audio isn’t as sophisticated as Apple’s. It uses 3D audio technology to produce sounds emanating from anywhere in your listening hemisphere.
NuraTrue Pro’s version duplicates the better audio experience of listening to stereo in a room where your ears sense sound placement from the relative strength of sounds from the left and right speakers.
You mightn’t get that balancing of sounds from headphones or earbuds, but the NuraTrue Pro seeks to do it. I found you can experience audio emanating from various directions.
You can also connect the buds to two devices simultaneously. That will be useful for connecting to a phone for calling, and a laptop at the same time.
The buds also support wireless charging, with 8 hours of playback on a single charge, and an additional 24 hours when recharged from the case.
Hats off to Nora’s use of microphones. There are eight in all, four on each side plus a bone conduction microphone. They are used to assess ambient sound during noise cancellation. The bone conduction microphone is also used for hearing tests.
There were things I didn’t like. The earbuds are premium in appearance but feel a bit big and heavy on your ears. I wouldn’t wear them for long periods.
When registering the buds, the Nura app kept saying the left ear tip or mesh “appears to be obstructed”. It took me several goes cleaning the left bud to satisfy the app’s fastidiousness. Watch that wax.
The science behind the automatically executed hearing test is amazing but I wasn’t that excited by the outcome. I managed the sound I wanted for listening to music using the app’s graphic equaliser.
The earbuds would occasionally announce they were “entering deep sleep” while playing content.
Nevertheless the quality and precision of audio delivered by the NuraTrue Pro is impressive.
The NuraTrue Pro’s full price is $499 but it’s expected you won’t have to lay out cash in one go. Nura is planning a rental scheme of about $20 per month for a NuraTrue Pro and subsequent updates.