At one time or another, everyone has wished that they could mute the world. It doesn't matter who you are or where you live — sometimes, you wish there was nothing but quiet.
Unfortunately, the world doesn't have a mute button, meaning that you're stuck listening to the grinding and screeching of the subway or people trying to talk over each other at a bar. It can be extremely obnoxious, even painful to listen to ... but there may be something that can help.
While it's impossible to tell the world to be quiet, the team over at Doppler Labs wants to give people control over their audio environment. Whether you want to hear the lead singer of a band or cancel out the droning of an ambulance's siren, it doesn't matter: you should be able to control what you hear. With the Here Active Listening System, you finally can.
At first glance, Here looks like any other earbuds — but it's far more complicated than that. Instead of taking sound from a device and transferring it to your ears, Here takes the sound of the world around you and lets you tweak it however you see fit. It sounds like pure science fiction, but it's real — and the team wants your help to make it happen.
Here is a surprisingly simple system, at least from a user's perspective: insert the earbuds, tweak the app on your phone, and you're done. It may take casual users some time to get a handle on what everything means — not everyone has access to and experience with an equalizer — but in the end, Here looks like it'll be an incredibly easy, yet powerful tool for controlling your audio environment.
On top of that, it looks like Here is on its way to being funded: as of this writing, the project has raised over $200,000, and with 27 days left to go, Doppler Labs will likely raise the remaining $50,000 with time to spare. There aren't any stretch goals quite yet (the project only just started, after all), but there's always a chance that Doppler will add them in later.
Relatively speaking, locking down a Here system will cost you: the cheapest tier for securing a set of earbuds is $179, and Doppler is only offering a limited quantity. As always, higher tiers include the rewards below it — but, if you're looking for just the earbuds, you're going to end up paying a bit more. That being said, the wait for Here won't be all that long: the first units are set to ship later this year, meaning that some early adopters may have the earbuds in time for Christmas.
If you're interested in picking one up or want to check out more of the technical details, head on over to Doppler Labs' official Kickstarter page.
Be sure to follow T-Lounge on Twitter and visit our Facebook page.
