Flare Audio Immerse ear inserts??

[antcollinet]

Refraction happens when a wave passes from one medium to another or wave propagation conditions within one medium change. Here, the medium is air and no other medium is involved, and propagation conditions don’t change. Hence, refraction cannot happen in this case unless I have missed something.

Daminit - wrote wrong word. Meant diffraction.

It's my age.

 

[dasdoing]

this company is a master of marketing. they had these ear-plugs that were hyped af and now are probably all in people's drawers taking dust

 

[Danasr]

I purchased a pair of the hifi version to asses them and to see if they are on to something..

I can say with some confidence that they are not!

The overall effect is to reduce upper midrange. This makes sense as these frequencies will not make it through the maze very well, unlike very high frequencies and low frequencies.

There is no improvement on detail, other than that that may come with the different frequency response.

Overall (somewhat unsurprisingly) they make it sound like you have some plastic tubes in your ear!

 

[antcollinet]

I purchased a pair of the hifi version to asses them and to see if they are on to something..

I can say with some confidence that they are not!

The overall effect is to reduce upper midrange. This makes sense as these frequencies will not make it through the maze very well, unlike very high frequencies and low frequencies.

There is no improvement on detail, other than that that may come with the different frequency response.

Overall (somewhat unsurprisingly) they make it sound like you have some plastic tubes in your ear!

That is dedication to the cause.

Welcome to the forum.

 

[Jrgreensboro]

Firat contribution to this forum by a complete technical audiophile novice who loves great music in all kinds of genres:

looking at the design it seems it simply tries to bypass the sound bouncing around your outer ear and simply channels it thru a small opening in the device. There the sound bounces around in what I presume is some sort of plastic chamber and then directed into your ear . The various angles the sound traverses creates some sort of sonic effect that is "different" or "novel" and thus your brain might perceive as better.

It does sound (see what I did there) like a gimmick like 1960s back of comic book xray glasses.

Gimmicky - especially at 60 bucks.

Tech radar didn't have a very encouraging review albeit not a scientific one at that.

But seems that the custom sonic shaping that some headphone dedicated apps try to do, accomplishes the same thing.

But I bet the echo effect you get sounds different enough without distortion that you might perceive it as "better"

Dunno, like most Facebook ads, even with well known brands, I simply never expect a ground breaking product to to live up to their hype. Preys on the FOMO vulnerable among us that there is something hidden that will be revealed if you buy our product.

 

[HXT1]

Glad I found this review, was to embarrassed to ask over at What's Best ... (maybe if they came in brass, or tuned alloys). My thought was they would do what cupping ones hands behind ones ears does... attenuate or block reflections, and act as a waveguide, but my understanding is it's more like having little mouse hands cupped at your outer ear and piped through plastic?
The guy from Manic Street Preachers RAVED about them!

 

[Diji]

I just received both the Stereo and Headphone versions. Basically a tiny, probably 3D printed insert, probably cost next to nothing to make. Which would be fine if it did anything other than muffle the sound. Tried all three earpiece sizes, several different sound sources and my studio Sony cans with the headphone version.

Does absolutely nothing beneficial. I will be returning them asap. Always the risk buying crap off an Instagram ad. Win some, lose most.

 

[nippi9]

If you had a bad experience(or a good one, though I've not actually seen one), please pop over to TrustPilot and share it. Save someone else from the pain? There is a growing call for the product to be recalled.

 

[nippi9]

I just received both the Stereo and Headphone versions. Basically a tiny, probably 3D printed insert, probably cost next to nothing to make. Which would be fine if it did anything other than muffle the sound. Tried all three earpiece sizes, several different sound sources and my studio Sony cans with the headphone version.

Does absolutely nothing beneficial. I will be returning them asap. Always the risk buying crap off an Instagram ad. Win some, lose most.

Can you please pop over to TrustPilot and share this review there?

 

[nippi9]

I purchased a pair of the hifi version to asses them and to see if they are on to something..

I can say with some confidence that they are not!

The overall effect is to reduce upper midrange. This makes sense as these frequencies will not make it through the maze very well, unlike very high frequencies and low frequencies.

There is no improvement on detail, other than that that may come with the different frequency response.

Overall (somewhat unsurprisingly) they make it sound like you have some plastic tubes in your ear!

Can you please pop over to TrustPilot and share this review there?

 

[Penelinfi]

Something that does change sound is pressing back my ears. Seems to reduce harshness in the upper mids/low treble. It's probably partial volume reduction but it also seemed less harsh when turning the speakers back up so those frequencies are at the same volume again.

Some people already have ears that are quite flat against the side of the head.

 

[aural_fixation]

Flare is pretty uncompromising in their standards. There's a long list of high end producers raving about them. I can't say that sells it for me, but when producers of massive stars are willing to endorse something, it's not a terrible idea to pay attention and at least try them. The science is not detailed on their website, but they have pretty extensive documentation in comparison to other companies. It's a new concept, so being skeptical is natural, but I am sold on the concept. It makes sense to me. I have used the Calmer earplugs for years, and they honestly save me from sensory overload regularly. Immerse seems to me like a very advanced, evolved version of that concept. I'm close to pulling the trigger to find out. At worst I return them, but at best it could make mixing a whole new ball game.

Recently had this new product pushed to me on fb. It is an ear insert that purportedly takes incoming sound and reflects it directly to the inner ear without the distortion created by our outer ear. A quick ASR search shows no one discussing it yet. If what this company is claiming is true this should be an area of very interesting research when it comes to the science of how we hear and whether it's possible and worth it to improve on it. Said another way, if all normal human perception of music throughout history has included a ~20% distortion component from our ears that our brain has been attempting to cancel out, would removing that distortion have caused us to build different instruments and perceive natural sounds differently over the years? Do IEM's essentially do the same thing such that we've already been experiencing this effect?

What I don't see is much science about this on their web page. While Flare seems to have been making related devices for some time leading up to this, the actual science from their research would help imo:

Flare Audio® Immerse® | Improves The Sound Of Cheaper Headphones

Immerse is a unique patented ear technology that improves the sound quality of low cost headphones and loudspeakers.

www.flareaudio.com

 

[aural_fixation]

Can you please pop over to TrustPilot and share this review there?

So basic premise is that the ear's frequency response isn't flat because of its physical shape and they compensate for this. Yet they also say themselves the brain already compensates for this. So using their product will, erm, do what exactly? Don't get me wrong, the basic idea and physics of it might make sense, but it would be interesting to first figure out if this is needed/wanted in the first place, let alone a single device would have the same effect in all persons. Apart from that, it's hard to take this serious because of the sheer amount of buzzwords.

I'm sold on the concept. The execution is something I can't comment on from personal experience, but as far as the science goes, it seems solid to me. My understanding is that it's not only mitigating frequencies and that's the whole story. When you remove the ability to hear a frequency, you also remove it from what you want to hear. What it's doing is filtering the noise by changing the shape of your ear canal at the input end. From what I'm looking at in the cutaway diagram it's more like it's extending your ear canal and doing it's job before the sound gets to your actual ear canal. This is why it gives everyone the same result so they hear the same thing. The reviews and testimonials of top producers (like for U2, Brian Eno, Amy Winehouse for example) rave about the detail they reveal. It's their ability to remove the amount of information natural distortion covers up that makes the difference. A huge part of mixing is trying to clear away the noise and make a spacious mix with a lot of detail. Frequencies are only part of it. Reflections and ambient sound add noise, which is why we use environmental sound treatment. Honestly, bass traps work not too differently. They alter the shape of the space and absorb some of the uneven, slow-traveling low end sound waves by "trapping" them to reduce peaks and nulls in the mix caused by bouncing around too much at a different speed than mid- and upper frequency ranges. We use tons of plug-ins for this, but I wonder how many we would use if we didn't hear that noise in the first place. EQ and compression would be much more accurate, as would the relationship between tracks. There's also a headphone version that is shaped differently at the end where sound comes in to accommodate the direct, horizontal input. Headphone acoustics are not something I know a lot about.

I don't know... I don't think it's as simple as people are making it out to be.

 

[Matt_Holland]

Flare are pushing hard with their paid ads which keep coming up on my Facebook feed.

Perhaps they would like to send some samples to Amir for testing as otherwise all that science-marketing is to me just bold claims.

My main question is how their designs can improve on other IEMs reviewed here that are basically flawless (particularly with EQ), like the ridiculously good Truthears amongst others.

 

[nippi9]

I'm sold on the concept. The execution is something I can't comment on from personal experience, but as far as the science goes, it seems solid to me. My understanding is that it's not only mitigating frequencies and that's the whole story. When you remove the ability to hear a frequency, you also remove it from what you want to hear. What it's doing is filtering the noise by changing the shape of your ear canal at the input end. From what I'm looking at in the cutaway diagram it's more like it's extending your ear canal and doing it's job before the sound gets to your actual ear canal. This is why it gives everyone the same result so they hear the same thing. The reviews and testimonials of top producers (like for U2, Brian Eno, Amy Winehouse for example) rave about the detail they reveal. It's their ability to remove the amount of information natural distortion covers up that makes the difference. A huge part of mixing is trying to clear away the noise and make a spacious mix with a lot of detail. Frequencies are only part of it. Reflections and ambient sound add noise, which is why we use environmental sound treatment. Honestly, bass traps work not too differently. They alter the shape of the space and absorb some of the uneven, slow-traveling low end sound waves by "trapping" them to reduce peaks and nulls in the mix caused by bouncing around too much at a different speed than mid- and upper frequency ranges. We use tons of plug-ins for this, but I wonder how many we would use if we didn't hear that noise in the first place. EQ and compression would be much more accurate, as would the relationship between tracks. There's also a headphone version that is shaped differently at the end where sound comes in to accommodate the direct, horizontal input. Headphone acoustics are not something I know a lot about.

I don't know... I don't think it's as simple as people are making it out to be.

Why do you say the science is sound? The science demonstrated, is that sound bounces around chaotically and that our ears act like small caves where sound is first jumbled before going into the ear canal. How, could this device possibly prevent this? Sure...if sound waves moved like a laser, or were capable of being focused into a laser like wave them OK... But that not how it works. Sound, can enter the entry hole at any angle and the sound waves will then rattle around and go all over the places once inside the device.

Its entirely an impossible science that is being represented.

People are being able to simply try them, and they failed. That's the simple part. 90% of people who tried them said they were useless, or worse than useless.

Now if Brian Eno told me getting kicked in the nuts was fun, well, it's Brian Eno, I'd listen. But after the first kick, I'd be backing my personal experience over his claims.

 

[cavedriver]

Why do you say the science is sound? The science demonstrated, is that sound bounces around chaotically and that our ears act like small caves where sound is first jumbled before going into the ear canal. How, could this device possibly prevent this? Sure...if sound waves moved like a laser, or were capable of being focused into a laser like wave them OK... But that not how it works. Sound, can enter the entry hole at any angle and the sound waves will then rattle around and go all over the places once inside the device.

Its entirely an impossible science that is being represented.

People are being able to simply try them, and they failed. That's the simple part. 90% of people who tried them said they were useless, or worse than useless.

Now if Brian Eno told me getting kicked in the nuts was fun, well, it's Brian Eno, I'd listen. But after the first kick, I'd be backing my personal experience over his claims.

as a wave propagating through air, I would be prepared to believe that the propagation could be "straightened" through narrow channels, but it would have to be backed up with CFD work, measurements, or good technical study references. I haven't seen that here yet for this specific scenario but I certainly haven't read the whole site. I'm just saying, it's not conclusive that these work, but neither is it been demonstrated why we should believe that they do. If anyone could shed some light on the behavior of sound waves in narrow channels I'm interested in hearing about the studies. Note that looking at IEM's like the Etymotics, the drivers are over a quarter of an inch from where the sound leaves the little earplug piece. That "tube" has a length over 4 times it's diameter as a rough estimate. If sound waves were "bouncing all over the place", you would hear a pretty garbled mess by the time the sound reached your ear, rather than the reference-level quality that some IEM's can get you.

 

[antcollinet]

I would be prepared to believe that the propagation could be "straightened" through narrow channels

Look up Diffraction.

It can't. Except for wavelengths significantly narrower than the channel. Wave length of 20Khz is about 1.7cm. I'm prepared to bet that all the "channels" in this device are significantly smaller than that.

Sound will spread out after whatever aperture it passes through - meet the walls of wherever it is now, and bounce around all over the place - again.

 

[fauxdiophile]

I bought the Immerse inserts a few days ago and they just arrived, and I can confirm everything said here is pretty much true. No matter how I wore them, what size ear tips I used, it really just never sounded good. It just sounds like I'm adding an unnecessary filter to my ears. Nothing gets enhanced, there is no magical clarity boost and my ears weren't 'finally hearing music as it was intended to be heard' because my brain didn't have to mask anything out like they claimed. Even if that IS a real phenomenon, and even if the their whole explanation about internal reflections inside the ear canal is valid, it's a pretty pointless thing to do. And it's laughable that they went through all the trouble to trademark the name and patent the product as if they had just uncovered some absolutely revolutionary tech that they really thought people would try to copy. It just doesn't sound good, and in my mind after trying it out I really don't see any instance where it has value.

As per the removal of HRTF that it seems to do, I would much rather just have a product that is dedicated to only doing that as opposed to anything else that is trying to do other 'enhancement' to the audio. Because at least from that angle it would be rather useful especially in immersive audio listening/gaming scenarios where you often have to pick the best fitting HRTF profile for your ears, or go through some kind of audio test or face scanning procedure to find your best HRTF profile.

Anyway, needless to say, I'm returning these ASAP. I just got them today and I was so supremely dissatisfied with the sound that I really can think of no other option than to return them. Even if they say that you should give them some weeks to get yourself accustomed to the sound... That kind of just shows how crap they are. If they were really as good as they claim they are, the improvement in fidelity would noticeable upon first listen. The first thing I noticed, was just how much worse everything sounded. 0/10 would not recommend anything from flare audio.