FLARE AUDIO E-PROTOTYPE

If you’re going to pump audio into your brain and make it sound good, your ultimate enemy might just be the inside of the human ear, which is a fleshy bathtub of messy resonances. While Flare Audio’s E-prototype buds look like something that was 3D-printed in somebody’s garage (or the company’s HQ down in Sussex), they use a new tech called Universal Sound Quality (USQ) that changes the way sound is reflected and minimises the distortion created by the weird shape of your lugs. Flare reckons that means they can pick out details that even the artists in the studio when the tunes were recorded didn’t hear. Now all we need is a wireless version…

£250 / flareaudio.com