Audeara app

The Audeara app, available for Android and iOS devices, is where you'll update the headphone's firmware and, more importantly, conduct the hearing test and enable Audeara Experience—activate the sound profile tailored around your hearing.


The hearing test has three levels of complexity: Standard, High Detail, and Ultimate Precision. They differ by the number of frequencies at which your hearing will be tested, and each side is tested separately. The Standard test has 8 frequency bands and takes around 3 minutes. The High Detail test has 16 frequencies and takes 5 minutes, while the Ultimate Precision test consists of 32 frequencies and can last upward of 10 minutes. For best results, it's recommended that you do the Ultimate Precision test. Once it starts, you'll hear continuous beeping sounds in your select ear. If you can hear these, you should tap the "Can Hear" button until barely audible. If you can't hear the beeps, tap the "Can't Hear" button. Once barely audible, you'll tap the "Barely Audible" button and move on to the next frequency. If you can't hear the beeps even after the selected frequency is as boosted as can be, don't worry—press "Barely Audible" and move on; the software will recognize that you can't hear that specific frequency and take it into consideration when creating your personal audiogram. Most people won't be able to hear anything above 16 kHz, but even if you struggle with frequencies slightly below that, don't worry too much since that's normal. However, if you find out you can't hear properly in the 2–5 kHz range, where our ears are most sensitive, you should look into getting yourself to a doctor.


Once you've conducted the test, which means having gone through all the frequencies for both your ears, the app will show you the results and create a custom profile for the headphones. To activate it, you'll need to tap on "Experience Audeara", which will take you to a screen where you'll have to select the strength of the Audeara's sonic personalization. Audeara recommends that you start with 50% and gradually move toward 100% as your brain gets used to your "personalized" sound. To me, the headphones sounded best with Audeara Experience set to 25%. That opened the sound a bit by audibly boosting the upper midrange and without doing anything undesirable to other parts of the frequency spectrum. Venturing above 50% resulted in an unnatural, tinny sound completely devoid of any warmth or pleasantness. I did try to force my brain to adjust to that kind of sound signature, as instructed by Audeara, but that simply wasn't possible. This isn't the sound I would ever want to adjust to. Every time I switched from 100% or 75% back to 25%, it felt like jumping into a warm bath on a cold day. Whether this a flaw in the system or something limited to me personally, I cannot say. All I can say for sure is that my ears didn't like the Audeara Experience when set to 75% or 100%. At the same time, I did like the sound performance better when it was set to 25% instead of 0% (no sound personalization), so the whole hearing test/audio personalization thing doesn't feel like a gimmick. I'm leaving the possibility open that someone with damaged hearing would benefit from it where I could not.