Bose, the specialist consumer sound engineering company, is getting into the assisted hearing headphone market with the launch of their new product, called the “Hearphones.” For years, Bose has been building and selling high quality audio products that typically perform greater than one might expect for their size. They also have a successful range of noise-cancelling headphones design, often advertised for long haul flights. Bose’s new Hearphone product appears to be positioned somewhere between a traditional hearing aid and noise-cancelling headphones, in a similar way to the Hear One and the Sony MDR-1000x noise-cancelling headphones, shown off earlier in the year at the IFA event, Berlin.
The Hearphones use Bose’s “Hear” application to deliver an enhanced hearing experience for the wearer. There’s at least one directional microphone and this can be controlled in order that the wearer can listen to precisely what he or she wants to. The Hearphones work in conjunction with Bose’s Hear application, which is already available and may be fine tuned with a number of presets designed to help the listener focus on just one person in front of them, or on individuals in a group conversation, when watching the television or listening to either live or streamed music. Early feedback, according to Bose’s website, has been extremely positive from testers.
The technology is designed for the wearing to selectively amplify or reduce real world sounds to a comfortable level, be this in reducing background noise or enhancing something one wants to listen to. However, Bose haven’t released the new product in so much of a fanfare but are instead offering a combination of the unveiling together with in-person demonstrations at the company’s headquarters in Framingham, Massachusetts. Unfortunately, pricing and availability isn’t yet published on the website nor can we find the hardware specifications and details. However, with the demonstrations concluding this coming Thursday, we can expect Bose to release this information towards the end of the week. Bose may also make a bigger noise about the Hearphones but with the product being launched so close to the end of the year, we may need to wait until 2017.