MARCH 2020 MACWORLD 119headphone, and it offers a very interesting
additional benefit—custom equalization
tailored to your specific hearing profile. It’s
a brilliant idea, and it works fairly well, at
least with ANC turned on.
FEATURES
The Audeara A-01 is a circumaural (over-
ear) headphone that features active noise
cancelling. In addition, the built-in
microphone used for ANC also lets you
talk on a connected phone via the
headphones.
Each closed-back earcup includes a
40mm Mylar driver, and the specified
frequency response extends from 20Hz
to 20kHz (no tolerance given). The
3.5mm audio input presents an
impedance of 32 ohms.
The primary input, however, is
Bluetooth—in this case, version 4.2. It
supports the SBC, aptX, and cVc codecs
and the A2DP, AVRCP, HFP, and HSP
profiles. Audeara is working on adding the
aptX LL and HD codecs (low latency and
high definition respectively), which will be
rolled out in a firmware update.
All of that is fairly standard fare for ANC
Bluetooth headphones. But the A-01 also
offers one unique feature. The companion
Audeara app, which is freely available for
Android and iOS devices, measures your
individual hearing profile and uses it to
program the headphones with an
equalization curve tailored to that profile.
Theoretically, this lets you hear more of
the music without having to turn it up. You
can even store multiple profiles for your
family and friends. How cool is that?
The A-01 is powered by a rechargeable
1000mAh battery. Happily, the main power
and ANC can be turned on and offThe power switch is at the
bottom of the left earcup.
Below it is a 3.5mm analog-
audio input, while the central
button above it controls play/
pause, skip forward/back,
answer/hang up phone call,
and Bluetooth pairing; the
flanking buttons increase
and decrease the volume.
The ANC on/off switch is
at the bottom of the right
earcup, along with the micro
USB port (not seen here) for
charging the battery.