- Final Audio will use ear scanning to create a personalized tone profile for its new TONALITE earphones
- They have Bluetooth 6.0, 10mm dynamic drivers and 6-mic noise reduction
- On Kickstarter now: $247 / £188 (approx AU$379)
Final Audio has unveiled a new kind of true wireless earphones with a system it calls TONALITE. The new TONALITE earphones claim to be “the first earphone in the world to offer personalized timbre, the unique tonal color and texture of sound, by analyzing the listener’s individual anatomical features”. In other words, it scans your ears and adjusts the sound accordingly.
Ear scanning isn’t new, but it’s typically focused on making sure you get the best possible fit and immersive sound. For example, my AirPods Pro 2 (and the newer AirPods Pro 3 and AirPods 4 earbuds and headphones) use ear scanning to adjust their personalized Spatial Audio.
But Final Audio says its system goes further and personalizes the actual tone of the audio.
What’s different about Final Audio TONALITE?
Final says that headphones and earphones are typically designed as one-size-fits-all products, but of course every person’s anatomy is different—and different in more ways than just the size of our ears and ear canals.
Sound is affected by the shape of the rooms it is in, which is why there is so much variation in the size and shape of musical instruments, in the shape and configuration of speakers, and in the way instruments and speakers sound in different rooms. And Final claims that TONALITE can correct for that variation in your anatomy by adjusting the tone of the sound based on your unique characteristics.
With TONALITE, you use your phone’s camera to scan your head and ears—a process Final says takes a few minutes—and then the app performs an “acoustic measurement of the ear canal.”
These two data sets are combined, processed in the cloud using Final’s own Digital Twin Audio Simulation Engine to create a model of how sound waves will bounce around inside your head, and used to create a custom sound map to download to your headphones.
As for the hardware. the earphones have a specially designed 10mm dynamic driver with exceptionally low harmonic distortion; Bluetooth 6.0 with LDAC and AAC; six microphone active noise reduction; and up to nine hours of playback between charges – all rivaling the best earphones.
I’m seeing a lot of coverage of these earbuds, but no reviews so far, so it’s unclear if the headphones deliver the giant leap the press release suggests. But if you want to take a chance, Final is launching these earphones on Kickstarter with an early bird price of $247 / £188 (approx. AU$379). That’s 25% off the full retail price.
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