Nuraphones
THE FUTURE OF PERSONAL LISTENING LOOKS, FEELS AND SOUNDS AMAZING.
NURAPHONE IS A truly unique beast in a world that’s taking its sweet time to evolve, and we commend the bold leaps it’s taking. From the moment you open the box, it’s immediately clear that this Melbournebased company has taken the design process very seriously. It’s rare that the included carry-case is worthy of mention, but this hard-shell offering is the best we’ve seen — a magnetic clasp, solid construction and a magnetically-detachable cable organiser transform it from a token inclusion into an essential companion to the Nuraphone.
The attention to detail extends to the unit itself, with a similarly sleek matte-black aesthetic and minimal-leaning design. The headband is sturdy and flexible and is coated in the same silicon as the earcups, yet doesn’t grease up or sweat as much as you’d expect. To adjust the size, you’ll need to slide the cups themselves up or down the band’s groove, and while this can prove a little awkward considering the button placement, you shouldn’t have to do it more than once or twice.
This minimal design ethos has made for some deftly subtle controls in the form of a configurable touch-activated button on both extremities of the headphones, but these are easy to locate while wearing and respond with a satisfying vibration when activated.
While the trend for active noise-cancelling in wireless cans is reaching the point of ubiquity, the in-ear and on-ear combination of the Nuraphone provides enough seal to passively achieve similar results. However, this dual-seal design element is likely going to be the unit’s most divisive feature, as the feeling of wearing both styles at once may take some adapting to, even for people used to both formats.
Once you’ve adjusted to the sensation of wearing the Nuraphone, it provides the most unique listening experience available on the market. Sit yourself in a quiet room and run through the automatic personalisation process on the free and intuitive Nura app in order to build your sound profile, which can, in turn, be stored in the headphones themselves. A series of tones cause your cochlea and eardrum to vibrate and produce their own tiny noises, which are then picked up by hyper-sensitive microphones and are used to determine how adept your ears are at catching various frequencies.
The result? No ear- or headphones possess as much clarity or sounds as alive as the Nuraphone. For an experience even more mind-blowing, the Immersion Mode allows you to scale up extra vibration and ‘felt’ frequencies delivered by the outer-cup, creating the effect of hearing the music live in concert — set off by thudding kick drums and rumbling sub-bass. While this mode will muddy up some styles of music and eventually grow fatiguing if left at higher settings, the slider helps to counter this or it can be deactivated entirely.
While the asking price may seem steep, Nuraphone is almost without competition in what it aims to achieve, and is unparalleled in its execution. With a 30-day satisfaction guarantee offered by Nura, we urge you to try them for yourselves.