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A young audio make spin out of Japan ’s NTT is showing off some personal audio tech atCES 2024that is singular not for what it has , but what it does n’t have — in both case , literally anything between you and the rest of the world . There ’s nothing there !
Nwm ( short for New Wave Maker and enounce “ noom , ” a representative told me ) stool headphone that employ a similar proficiency to noise canceling , but kind of wrench inside - out . Instead of offset out noise coming into your ear , the headphones delete any noise they make that is n’t going toward you .
The principles are similar : Sound wave can cancel each other out if you tune up them carefully in what ’s called destructive interference . That ’s usually not a problem with earbuds or close - back earphone , which physically contain the speech sound they produce . But nwm ’s whole affair is that their headphones are more like a span of small talker right by your ear .
The idea is that you could hear your music or call , but also the real world , so you do n’t have to belt down your AirPods out every fourth dimension someone says something and make them reprize it . Great for walking around the city , too . Of course , the flip side to this is that the euphony or call is being broadcast to the world — unless , as nwm ’s headphone do , they also transmit a destructive sound wave to cancel out any escaping noise . They call it a “ personal sound zone . ”
The company has put out a few small earbud - type headphones , but at CES they showed off two somewhat singular novel audio options . One is a chair with speaker unit built into the wings by your heading , where the sound of music is perfectly clear when you lean back , but muffled and hushed even a few inch away . The chair is pretty normal looking for a gamer - type one , and you would n’t know it had loudspeaker system hidden in it .
In that case , you ’ll have to both like the chair enough to make it your main seating choice , and also have a lean - back stance whenever you require to pick up sound , which is emphatically not me ( hunch over and leaning forwards , occasionally commend to tidy up , like right now ) . That ’s why I was attracted totheir other new product , the MBH001 .
The striking design count like a normal on - capitulum or over - auricle earpiece set that had everything but the very in-between and boundary taken out . There ’s just nothing there !
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I was skeptical , but I got to try out these other versions , and while it was unmanageable to evaluate the sound timbre on the noisy show floor ( peculiarly since there was nothing stopping it from get in ) , I could certainly hear the sound clearly while tire them , and not at all when they were off my caput .
The silicone polymer gasket that served as cushioning was n’t much for consolation , but otherwise the headphones were quite clear and achievable — nothing fancy , just a aboveboard design except for missing about 75 % of their spate .
The company said that the MBH001 is for certain their next merchant vessels product , but it wo n’t be for a few month at least . I ’ll keep in feeling with them and stress out the final product when they make it useable .
