- Final Audio will use ear scanning to create a personalized tone profile for its new TONALITE earbuds
- They have Bluetooth 6.0, 10mm dynamic drivers and 6-mic noise cancellation
- On Kickstarter now: $247 / £188 (about AU$379)
Final Audio has unveiled a new kind of true wireless earbuds featuring a system it calls TONALITE. The new TONALITE earbuds 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 audio accordingly.
Ear scanning is not new, but it’s typically focused on ensuring you get the best possible fit and for immersive audio. 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 that its system goes further, and personalizes the actual tone of the sound.
What’s different about Final Audio TONALITE?
Final says that headphones and earbuds 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 spaces it’s in, which is why there’s such variety in the size and shape of musical instruments, in the shape and configuration of loudspeakers, and in the way instruments and speakers sound in different spaces. And Final claims that TONALITE can correct for that variety in your anatomy, adjusting the tone of the audio based on your unique characteristics.
With TONALITE, you use your phone camera to scan your head and ears – a process Final says takes a few minutes – and then the app carries out an “ear canal acoustic measurement”.
Those two datasets 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 for downloading into your headphones.
As for the hardware. the earbuds feature a specially designed 10mm dynamic driver with exceptionally low harmonic distortion; Bluetooth 6.0 with LDAC and AAC; six-mic active noise cancellation; and up to nine hours of playback between charges – all compete will with the best earbuds.
I’m seeing a lot of coverage of these earbuds but no reviews so far, so it’s unclear whether the headphones deliver the giant leap the press release is suggesting. But if you want to take a chance then Final is launching these earbuds on Kickstarter, with an early bird price of $247 / £188 (about AU$379). That’s 25% off the full retail price.
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