There are lots of reasons to attend Coachella, and a surprising one just joined the list.
Goldenvoice, which runs Coachella and basically every other major concert in the world, announced a partnership with Doppler Labs to provide festival-goers the option to purchase the Here Active Listening System before it’s released to the general public.
Here raised $635,189 of a $250,000 in a Kickstarter last year and this is the first time the system will be available to non-backers.
Here looks like a pair of wireless earbuds but offers a very different experience. The two buds fit into your ears but rather than allowing you to listen to music, they offer a degree of control over your live audio environment. That means noise reduction, cutting out a crying baby, amplifying speech, or changing bass and treble levels of a concert. It’s like an equalizer that you wear in your ears, and apparently it’s pretty incredible.
Goldenvoice has teamed with Here to create presets for individual stages and acts. You can now listen to, for example, LCD Soundsystem in an optimized audio environment.
Doppler Labs executive chairman Fritz Lanman characterizes Here as “bionic hearing” in an interview with Mashable.
"We're introducing the world to audio augmented reality," he said.
The earbuds come in three sizes that Doppler says fit 95-97% of ears. The buds are designed not for all-the-time wear but for discreet, one to four hour uses like in an office or airplane to reduce noise, or in a concert environment to optimize the audio experience.
Here offers five hours of battery life with an additional five hours of charge available when you dock them in their carrying case. The team plans to launch by year’s end, with a price point between $200 and $300.
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