- Final Audio will use ear scanning to create a custom tone profile for your new TONALITE headphones
- They have Bluetooth 6.0, 10mm dynamic drivers, and 6-microphone noise cancellation
- On Kickstarter now: $247 / £188 (around AU$379)
Final Audio has introduced a new type of truly wireless headphones with a system it calls TONALITE. The new TONALITE headphones claim to be “the world’s first headphones to deliver personalized timbre, the unique tonal color and texture of sound, by analyzing the listener’s individual anatomical characteristics.” In other words, it scans your ears and adjusts the audio accordingly.
Ear scanning isn’t new, but it generally focuses on ensuring you get the best possible fit and immersive audio. For example, my AirPods Pro 2 (and the newer AirPods Pro 3 and AirPods 4 headphones and earphones) use ear scanning to adjust their custom spatial audio.
But Final Audio says its system goes further and customizes the actual tone of the sound.
What’s different about Final Audio TONALITE?
Final says that headphones and earphones are generally designed as one-size-fits-all products, but of course, everyone’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 spaces it is in, which is why there is so much variety 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 spaces. And Final claims that TONALITE can correct for that variation in your anatomy, adjusting the tone of the audio based on your unique characteristics.
With TONALITE, you use your phone’s camera to scan your head and ears (a process that Final says takes a few minutes) and then the app performs an “acoustic measurement of the ear canal.”
Those two sets of data are combined, processed in the cloud using Final’s 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 headphones feature a specially designed 10mm dynamic driver with exceptionally low harmonic distortion; Bluetooth 6.0 with LDAC and AAC; six-microphone active noise cancellation; and up to nine hours of playback between charges – all will rival the best headphones.
I’m seeing a lot of coverage about these headphones, but so far there are no reviews, so it’s unclear if the headphones make the big leap that the press release suggests. But if you want to take a chance, Final will be launching these headphones on Kickstarter, with an early bird price of $247/£188 (around AU$379). That’s a 25% discount off the full retail price.
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