Ever wish you could turn off audience chatter while watching a live show, a noisy group of kids across the table in the restaurant, or the loud music your roommate is playing in her Mini Hi-Fi System? Sure, wearing ear plugs will let you tune out the world, but what if you only want to filter specific noises while hearing everything else? That’s exactly what Here, a sound-filtering pair of wireless ear buds, is designed to do.
Described as “a wireless interactive listening system,” the buds are designed to filter real-world audio, allowing you turn up, turn down, and enhance any individual sound in the immediate vicinity. Can’t stand the loud, booming bass every time you visit a club? Use this device to suppress it. What if you actually enjoy the bass and can’t get enough? Boost it. Want to hear a live show differently? Add reverb, echo, or any other effect you want in real time.
Here is a pair of wireless in-ear buds with 8mm drivers plugged into your ears and a set of microphones on the outside. These mics pick up audio from your surroundings, which is then piped through to a digital signal processor and subsequently fed into your ears at a very low latency (under 30 microseconds). An accompanying app allows you to define any sound processing that takes place, allowing you to augment the original audio into whatever you want to hear. From there, you just increase the volume, lower it, suppress specific sounds, add flange, make it echo, and more, tweaking things to make everything sound according to your liking.
A Kickstarter campaign is currently running for Here. Pledges to reserve a unit starts at $179.