Sound innovation: Nuheara IQbuds launched at CES in Las Vegas
A woman tests Nuheara IQbuds at the gym
- The Australian
- 12:00AM January 7, 2017
ASX-listed wireless audio outfit Nuheara has used the flashy CES event in Las Vegas to launch IQbuds, earphones it says will be life-changing for those with hearing impairments.
Nuheara was founded by CEO Justin Miller and David Cannington after a decade of experience building a Silicon Valley industrial hearing company Sensear.
“People were saying ‘wouldn’t it be great if that technology worked in a restaurant or in social settings’. Over a decade you keep hearing that,” Mr Miller told
The Weekend Australian.
“Three years ago I came back to Australia and was thinking about what to do next, and David and I stayed in contact and we decided to take what we experienced and take that to the consumer space.”
The pair teamed up with researchers at Curtin University to develop the IQbuds, wireless earphones that allow people to augment and control their audio environment to hear what they want to hear.
Mr Miller, who is deaf in one ear, said the earphones use algorithms to drown out ambient noise, while elevating speech for clearer conversations.
They also have an emphasis on high-fidelity sound, meaning music sounds great.
According to Mr Miller, being a hardware firm requires significant capital, so he pursued a reverse takeover on the ASX, before launching a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo.
“Having moved back from the US where everything is venture capital-related, it was completely foreign to me that a junior tech would consider being publicly listed,” he said.
“But the ASX is a healthy area to raise capital for a junior miner. And the more I looked at it, I thought what we’re offering is pretty much the same; we’re raising capital with a view that you’re ultimately going to make something.
“The venture capital space wanted us to be revenue-positive, but we’re a hardware product. And the only means to raise capital was a reverse takeover. We wanted to keep it in Australia and be an Australian company.”
The Indiegogo campaign was one of the most successful of 2016, selling 4000 headphones to customers in 82 countries, and the product has started shipping.
The product is timed perfectly with Apple’s decision late last year to remove the headphone jack in its iPhones, a move Mr Miller described as the “best thing possible”.
David Swan travelled to Las Vegas courtesy of Intel.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/bus...s/news-story/99d1ca218b7e4bdae425fa014f5b9fda
(20min delay)