The challenge
Nura's technology is channel sounding: a reflectometry approach that plays audio into the ear, measures the acoustic response, and builds a profile of the individual wearer's ear canal and inner-ear physiology. That profile then drives a customised DSP equalisation, matched to how one person hears. Running it inside a pair of headphones takes serious DSP at very low power, which is why the silicon came from CSR, Qualcomm's Bluetooth audio division. Developing against that subsystem, and then shrinking the result far enough to sit inside an ear, were the two problems Tekt was brought in for.
The work
Tekt came to the work as specialists in firmware, high-density PCB design and electromechanical integration.
The evaluation kit
We built the initial evaluation kit as an open-board system for developing against the Qualcomm Bluetooth audio and DSP subsystem. It is the platform the product line started from — the board the technology was developed against before there was a product to put it in.
Generation one and the in-ear version
We then contributed design review on the generation-one hardware, and delivered the rigid-flex HDI miniaturisation that became the first in-ear version. A rigid-flex board with high-density interconnect is what let the electronics fold into the volume an in-ear housing allows.
The engagement ran through Nura's post-Kickstarter funding round with Blackbird Ventures and the delivery of the first 10,000 generation-one headphones. Whenever Nura needed advanced high-density miniaturisation or Bluetooth circuit board design, we were called on.
About the client
Nura builds headphones that measure the wearer's hearing and tune themselves to it. Kyle Slater, co-inventor of the technology, was a university contemporary of Matt Adams. Nura was later acquired by Denon, long established in audio.
