A new audio brand spun out of Japanese company NTT is showing off some personal audio technology at CES 2024 that stands out not for what it has, but for what it doesn’t have — in either case, literally anything between you and the rest of the world. There is nothing there!
Nwm (short for New Wave Maker and pronounced “noom,” a representative told me) makes headphones that use similar noise-cancelling technology, but kind of upside down. Instead of canceling out the noise that reaches your ear, headphones cancel out any noise you make that doesn’t go toward you.
The principles are similar: sound waves can cancel each other out if you tune them carefully in what’s called destructive interference. This isn’t usually an issue with closed-ear headphones or headphones, which actually contain the sound they produce. But the whole thing is that their headphones are like a pair of small speakers right next to your ears.
The idea is that you can hear music or calls, but also the real world, so you don’t have to take out your AirPods every time someone says something and have them repeat it. Great for walking around town too. Of course, the flip side of that is that the music or call is being broadcast out into the world – unless, as NWM’s headphones do, it’s also transmitting a destructive sound wave to cancel out any escaping noise. They call it the “Personal Sound Zone.”
The company has introduced a few small, earbud-type headphones, but at CES it showed off two great new audio options. One is a chair with speakers built into the wings next to your head, where the sound of the music is crystal clear when you lean back, but muffled and quiet even from a few inches away. The chair is pretty ordinary if it’s looking for a gaming type chair, and you wouldn’t know it has speakers hidden in it.
In this case, you’ll have to love the chair enough to make it your main seating option, and also have a lean-back stance when you want to hear the sound, which is definitely not me (hunched over and leaning forward, sometimes remembering to straighten up, like now) . That’s why I was drawn to him Their other new product, MBH001.
The striking design looks like a regular set of on-ear or over-ear headphones that has everything but the middle and edge. There is nothing there!
I was skeptical, but I had to try these early versions, and while it was difficult to evaluate the sound quality in a noisy showroom (especially since there was nothing blocking it in), I was definitely able to hear the sound clearly while I was wearing it, and not at all when it was on. Off my head.
The silicone gasket that served as padding didn’t provide much comfort, but other than that the headphones were very light and manageable – nothing fancy, just a simple design except for the loss of about 75% of their mass.
The company said the MBH001 is definitely the next shipping product, but it won’t be for at least a few months. I will keep in touch with them and try the final product when it becomes available.