Introducing Joy&Oluv‘Sone NH1n - neutral ANC headphone (Patreon)

This became a bit longer but I wanted to take my time for all this and am proud to officially announce our NH1n headphone that we are currently working on.

As I was not quite sure about the outcome and due to my disappointing experience with the previous NH1 project, I wanted to take my time and also work more on my target until I finally decided I was ready to play around with the new headphone sample and spent about a week to create a tuning for it and make it sound „correct“ for me. I am actually really satisfied with the result and maybe it’s the best I have achieved so far for a headphone or inear although I am sure that there is still room for further improvement.

So far I managed to create 3 different sound modes although I am planning a 4th more bass boosted mode too which should also be included.

completely neutral in terms that there is no bass boost or very little in the lowest frequencies to overcome the limitations of the more subtle bass perception through headphones compared to the more physical bass experience you usually get from speakers.

This is the „plus“ mode, so generally just a bit of lower bass and treble emphasis. I wanted to keep this subtle, it should still sound neutral just with some little extra kick and sparkle. I am open for discussion if I should add „more“ of everything but sometimes too much can be too much…

This would be the „in-room“ mode which should represent more how a neutral speaker would sound in a room. Of course every room will alter the sound to a different degree, so this is just an „offer“ from me how I would interpret this kind of response through a headphone.

As mentioned this will be the Boombox or Partybox Setting. Simply more bass more treble and more of everything in abundance.

So far I could only listen to my tuning sample which is especially prepared to allow direct connection to the Qualcomm app. Right now I am expecting a first firmware in order to also check all other samples how those will sound.

I’ve been listening a lot with it the last days and it became quite a pleasure for me but took me quite a bit to actually get there.

I still cannot predict how much my perception of sound due to individual HRTF differences will differ to yours and how much the headphone can compensate for this but my assumption is that it should be definitely an improvement in most cases, even if you won’t achieve the same degree of transparency like me as my own ears were used for tuning and not some heavily averaged generalized artificial ear.

I want to state again that it was very hard for myself to get to this point with endless listening and adjusting, correcting etc and I do not claim that the sound I perceive from the headphone will be the same for you. But any other headphone will give you the same problem, as it will also sound like "something" just different, although in my case it works „perfectly“ and sounds more or less "correct" for me and it may also work for you to some degree.

Once everything is finished from my side and I managed to readjust my settings towards the other samples if necessary, then I can be sure that the final product will meet my own expectations and only then I will start a crowdfunding campaign. This is the only way for me to allow for mass production. Only if you preorder one, this product will ever come alive. I actually reached my goal I have at least 1 wireless headphone which I can fully enjoy and don’t need anything more, but maybe I can also offer you some better and more natural listening experience when the production can really be realized.

In this video I wanted to give you a first idea what to expect from this headphone sound wise. Unfortunately closed headphones are hard to capture because the enclosed air volume transfers any body movement and noise towards the microphone, so please apologize some side noises or occasional clipping due to excessive subbass content being captured as well.

I have readjusted my compensation for capturing headphones a bit since my last video as it was definitely too bright sounding compared to the actual headphone that was captured. It is still not perfect right now, but this would need more time to optimize if it’s possible at all. It’s more or less like tuning some headphone just that instead of adjusting the sound of the headphone, you must match the recording to sound correct through the given headphone, thus we have 2 variables of error how realistic my samples really can be, the recording itself and how much the headphone differs from the target, if these match perfectly the headphone would be able to reproduce itself perfectly, which is close to impossible. Therefore any tuning is just an approximation of the optimum. You can get quick results within some minutes if you have a reference curve that you can use as a guide but the refinement takes much longer and it becomes harder and harder to achieve a real improvement. Changing some lower frequencies can totally ruin the treble and you need to perform another refinement step to get a smooth result again.

I personally find this totally exhausting because the goal to reach perfection makes you seek for the smallest issues and differences therefore the effort was hopefully worth it and will somehow pay off.

I hope we can make this happen and hopefully you can also enjoy a better sound without having to spend a grand on some DAC…