Doppler Labs, a young design technology firm focused on creating “wearable, immersive and human tech”, has collected a $17 million from investors this week after an already successful crowdfunding campaign for their profound new project “Here”. The popularity of the concept is pretty understandable, as Here could be one of the most groundbreaking inventions of the decade. It’s already being called a ‘superhuman hearing device’.
What Here allows you to do is essentially ‘bionic hearing’: you insert the Here buds in your ears, they’re wirelessly connected to a smartphone app which acts as the remote control. From here you can control what you hear and how much of it you want to hear. You could, for instance, turn up the bass or treble during a DJ set as you please, or you can cut out unpleasant noises like car-horns in an inner city traffic jam, a baby crying on your train, or the screech of that same train as it comes to a halt.
The idea sprang to life at Doppler’s office, located at the ever sprawling SoHo street in London, where blaring car-horns are a given all through the day. Noah Kraft, CEO of Doppler Labs, says his office isn’t intentionally loud, but the traffic outside has been a constant reminder to them that the world isn’t always sound-optimized.
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Another feature envisioned by the company is sound effects. Imagine adding delay, reverb, or EQ to at a concert. “Adding reverb can potentially turn every room into Carnegie Hall” Kraft says.
On Tuesday Doppler announced the close of a $17 million Series B investment by groups like The Chernin Group and Acequia Capital and musicians like Hans Zimmer and Tiesto, whom also gave advice on the sound effects feature of the futuristic hearing device.
A Business Insider contributor tested the first version of Here said that it was still kind of clunky, but Kraft promised that there will be a long trial and error period in which Here can be developed. During the “incubation period”, as Kraft calls it, will see extensive development of Here, and a first version of the product can be expected to arrive on the doormats of the 2,855 backers of the Kickstarter campaign. This stage will last through the end of 2015, after which Here could theoretically be made available to the public.
Source: Buisness Insider
