I haven’t lusted for a product in recent memory as much as I have for the Here One. As someone who is overly optimistic about the idea of truly wireless earbuds, and as someone who was genuinely impressed by the technology behind (and social implications of) Here Active Listening — Doppler Labs’ first pair of earbuds, which let you augment the audio around you but didn’t feature audio streaming — this seemed like the perfect product for me. Here One looked like it would fall right in that sweet spot of bleeding-edge tech that you could still use every day.
The Here One earbuds are impressive in a lot of different ways: the sound quality is the best you’ll find on truly wireless Bluetooth earbuds; the hardware design is superb; and the sound manipulation technology is robust and a taste of truly augmented reality while scratching at some fascinating social implications. If Here Active Listening was meant to be a limited run proof of concept, then Here One was Doppler’s first swing at making a product that could appeal to a wide audience. But occasionally spotty Bluetooth connections and insufficient battery life handcuff the experience, especially when you consider the $300 price tag.
Hands down, Here One sounds the best out of all the truly wireless earbuds I’ve tested. Music is more clear and dynamic than on the Bragi Headphone, which I felt was the the best-sounding pair of truly wireless earbuds until now. Here One also makes AirPods sound pedestrian, but this is also thanks to the way the earbuds create a full seal in your ear (there is a variety of rubber and foam tips included in the packaging, too). Doppler Labs is quick to boast about how many software engineers it has on staff, in part because they’re not all dedicated to the augmented reality side of things. These people know their music, and it shows.
Listening to music on Here One is like fanning out a deck of cards. You’ll discover there’s more to songs you thought you knew well. It’s not an enormous difference, like the kind you’d discover if you were listening to music through an amp or on a device with a DAC, but it’s an appreciable one.
,
,
The horn parts I’m always humming along to on Dr. John’s album Locked Down haven’t changed, and yet on Here One it sounds like the instruments occupy different spaces around me, which adds to the complexity of the music. With Here One I was able to make out the wetness of Childish Gambino’s mouth (sorry) as he sings in “Zombies,” a detail I had never noticed in dozens of previous listens. The earbuds also do a good job of handling high-frequency sound, too: I heard cymbal hits and high hat taps I had never noticed in the punk rock of PUP, and that music is usually muddy as hell on Bluetooth earbuds.
HERE ONE SOUNDS BETTER THAN BRAGI’S OR APPLE’S WIRELESS EARBUDS
Something I also appreciate about Here One is that the hardware and software experience is simple and slick. With a quick tap to either earbud, for instance, you can pause that music and let in the sound around you. This is called “bypass” in the Here One app — which is fantastic, by the way — because it interrupts any music or audio filters that are working in order let in a baseline audio mix.
The bypass mode is super helpful when someone starts talking to you, but also if you just generally want to pull yourself out of your music for a moment and don’t want to pluck out (and risk dropping) the earbuds. It takes a minute to work up the muscle memory of striking the touch-sensitive part in the center of the earbuds, but once you do it becomes a simple and integral part of the experience.
,
,
I and some of my co-workers) have written about the mechanics of Doppler Labs’ audio filter technology before. What’s impressive about it is not just what it can do, but also that the sound coming through sounds so realistic. These earbuds are taking sound waves, turning them into digital signals, turning them back into sound, and it’s not only happening faster than you can notice, but it doesn’t sound fuzzy or digital.
Better yet, the earbuds place the sound in the correct space, so if someone is speaking behind me it sounds like they’re behind me. You can close your eyes using Here One and still know where everything is.
The thing to know with the way Here One uses this technology is that, right now, what you can do with audio filters and the “Live Remix” — an equalizer in the app that lets you raise or lower specific audio frequencies of the world around you — it isn’t that much different than it was on Here Active Listening.
,
,
There are eight audio filters at launch: Airplane, City, Crowd, Noise Mask (or white noise), Office, Restaurant, and two for enhancing and isolating speech directly in front of / behind you. Each filter is an attempt to supplement (or improve) your listening abilities in typically loud situations or ones where it’s tough to discern speech.
Restaurant mode helps block out general din while still letting in the frequencies that most voices travel in, and for the most part it works. The Live Remix mode, on the other hand, lets you shut out or let in specific audio frequencies on your own, almost like a “manual mode” for the predefined audio filters. (Live Remix also has its own suite of preset adjustments like “echo,” “reverb,” or “flange,” which provide trippy effects but aren’t as obviously useful.)
HERE ONE IS GOING TO GAIN CAPABILITIES DOWN THE ROAD, WHICH IS PROMISING
I fell in love with using the Live Remix mode at concerts when I was trying out Here One’s predecessor, Here Active. I spent years as a concert photographer and was always on the hunt for a reliable pair of earplugs, but I always had to settle for something that dulled the sound in really broad strokes. Doppler’s tech is the kind of thing I never even thought was possible: a product that could protect my hearing while also allowing me to tweak the sound mix live in my ears.
Doppler Labs says it plans to add to Here One’s augmented listening capabilities with regular software updates over the life of the product. For example, “smart suggestions” are on the way, where the app will be able to prompt you to turn on restaurant mode because it knows you walked into a restaurant. Doppler is also working on partnerships with brands and sports teams, so someday soon you’ll be able to wear Here One at a Cleveland Cavaliers game and get commentary or stats over the real sound of the game. Doppler’s even working on real-time language translation, though that will likely never be released in time for Here One.
But the current version of Here One often feels too much like a tech demo because it the current applications are so limited. And that’s a problem that’s only made worse by some of Here One’s shortcomings — the biggest of which is battery life.
,
,
The Here One earbuds last about two hours if you use them for streaming music from your phone. That’s regardless of whether or not you’re also using audio filters, too. If you just use filters or any other outside audio augmentation, the earbuds can last about three hours.Here One comes with a carrying case that charges the earbuds. It holds four extra charges and it takes about an hour to recharge the earbuds. The case helps mitigate the earbuds’ short battery life, but it’s far from making the experience tolerable.
THE SHORT BATTERY LIFE IS A DRAG
Two hours of battery life on Here One means the device’s capability flies in the face of some of its intended use cases. Forget about using the Airplane mode for a full cross-country flight, or even during a half shift (let alone a day) at the office. Going back to how I would have loved these for shooting concerts, I think of it this way: I would want to use Here One to listen to music on the subway ride to the venue, and then just walk in and switch to an audio filtering mode during the performance. But with a two-hour battery life, there’s just no way this would be possible.
Doppler Labs CEO Noah Kraft has told me that the version of Here One that’s shipping this week is optimized to work the best as opposed to being economical when it comes to battery usage, and that this could change over time. As Doppler gets more data on how and when people are using the earbuds, Kraft argues, they could start doing things like sending less power to parts of the earbuds that you’re not using to make the earbuds last longer.
,
Source: Theverge