Has anyone heard or own these? Could be interesting…
I saw Wave Theory’s review of them.
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Interesting. The marketing pitch seems to be that the 8 drivers (4 in each cup?) somehow provide a better heavy metal music listening experience by mimicking the live performance. I’ve been to my fair share of live metal shows - never has the live sound bested the sound quality on the album; and that says a lot, as heavy metal isn’t know for its high quality recordings. I’ve experienced some decent sound at shows (Iron Maiden, Dream Theater, etc.), but it’s rare. Not sure I’d use that as my marketing pitch…
Is there a real frequency response measurement of this thing some where? I remain skeptical, even with Axel involved. There are already plenty of headphone out there that \m/ just fine, but I’ll be happy to admit it if these truly rock.
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Seems like a mashup of the (now discontinued / closeout) ear-penetrator Nuraphone and the (discontinued and hyper-polarizing) Bose 901:
The Nuraphone brand is dying:
Thank you for your interest in Nura products. We would like to inform you that we have discontinued selling Nura branded products. Our warranty claims and support team is here to assist you if needed.
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Actually in Apr 2023 Nura got acquired by Denon, mainly for their personalized audio tech stuff.
Good for whoever started the company I guess. They must’ve gotten a pretty nice payout.
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I saw the Denon info on their website but didn’t interpret that as a positive. This occurred in the same period as the sales of Sennheiser and Audeze. I perceive all such corporate sales as the consolidation of economically weaker players in an overstuffed industry (they are fighting King Kong Apple, big Bose, etc.). See the history of automobiles, banks, cell phone vendors, etc. The Nuraphone always had mixed reviews, and is now selling for $199 online. So, was this a big payday or did Denon acquire tech assets at a discount? Were the terms of the deal made public?
Edit: Partial answers here: Denon snaps up Nura, says new earbuds arriving this year | Digital Trends
Terms not public. Denon itself was recently acquired by a medical tech company too. Tech firms die all the time. Many of them never make a dime of profit.
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Ya for sure, don’t get me wrong I definitely don’t think Denon acquiring Nuraphone necessarily meant that there was really much to the brand. I think it was both a nice payday for the Nuraphone creator and Denon got these tech assets on a discount. Whether or not these assets were really worth anything… well that’s something else entirely.
That’s not how the process or the math works.
For a typical technology start-up:
- A leader, be they an inventor, visionary, or engineer, comes up with a product idea (i.e., dual-driver custom tuned headphones).
- The leader approaches either a Silicon Valley early-stage investor for money, or goes to a bank or spends their own cash. If not self-funded, the investor owns a piece of the final product for providing the cash. For ease of math let’s say the company gets $5 million in total (ignoring phasing and first, second, or later rounds of funding).
- The leader rents an office, hires engineers, and builds prototype products. These are iteratively tested until ready for sale, or until they run out of cash and sell a half-baked product. Salaries for qualified engineers: $2M, office and overhead $0.5M.
- The leader contracts with a (Chinese) manufacturer to set up their factory and produce the product, and then build maybe 5,000 examples for the pricey first batch. Cost: $1M.
- The firm hires marketing staff, and they buy a bunch of ads and send out a bunch of free demos to reviewers. Cost: $1M.
- The leader needs to eat and live somewhere, and pay taxes too. That eats up the rest of the $5M.
Outcomes:
The product is a big hit
- Pay back the investor
- Make more copies
- Sell the technology and/or get rich as the next Apple or Google
- Leader’s corporation loses everything
- Investor sells the assets (i.e., technology, research findings, prototypes, left over products) for whatever they can. If it all sells for $100,000 they lose $4.9M, if it sells for $4.9M they lose $100,000. They still lose money. Their “nice payday” is actually a cut-your-losses day.
Buyer’s risk: The asset buyer (here perhaps struggling Denon) gets either great technology and makes a fortune, or buys junk that they can do nothing with. Repeat all of the above. The new owner of Denon and Nura is likely trying the same thing that the founder of Nura tried, but with a bunch of once-failed or failing assets.
I’ve seen dozens of new tech products come and go. Computers, cameras, audio, foods, cars, energy systems, clothing, toys, etc. Many only last 1-2 years. Some become collector’s items. Some become landfill.