Deborah Kendrick
For many, the brand name Bose is synonymous with magnificence in audio. A Bose headset that promised not only excellent sound delivery when paired with up to eight Bluetooth devices, but also enabled the wearer to customize tuning in and tuning out to the immediate sound environment, struck me as innovative and unique. I wanted to find out if there was anything to this technology Bose calls "conversation enhancing," so ordered a pair of these exceedingly pricey headphones to see for myself.
Out of the Box
The headset itself is a thin yoke that rests behind your neck. Mine is black, but it comes in a few other colors. Extending from each side of the yoke, below your ears, is a short wire that ends in a securely fitting ear bud. Connected to each ear bud is a curved piece, something like a closed capital C, that nests in the bowl of your ear to anchor the actual ear bud. On the right-hand wire, halfway between ear and neck, are the controls on a 1.5-inch rectangle similar to those found on many headsets. On one flat surface of this piece are the switches for operating a paired Bluetooth device; on another, narrower surface are controls for World Volume mode. We'll talk about controls later.
Inside the yoke, against your neck, on the right-hand side, is the power switch. It's flat, probably to avoid irritating your neck, but once identified, is easily located by touch. Traveling another inch to the left, you will find the tiny rubber flap (Bose calls it a "hinged door") covering the micro USB port used for charging the device. Charging for about 3 hours will provide power for 8 to 10 hours.
Also in the box is a sleek, hard shell zippered case. The case is made to perfectly fit the headset, and has an additional internal pocket. Finally, there is a micro USB cable for charging the unit, and two additional pairs of tips for the ear buds. Bose ships the Hearphones with the medium tips already affixed to the ear buds, with a pair each of small and large tips in the box. Each size is a different color, and each tip is marked for left or right. The internal pocket in the hard shell case holds the charging cable and additional tips nicely, thus making it convenient to keep all components of the product together in one place.
Pairing with an iPhone
Bose Hearphones can be paired with Android and iOS devices. Bose instructions (available online) suggest downloading the Bose app and pairing from there. I tried this repeatedly with two iPhones, and failed each time. By going into the phone's Bluetooth settings, however, the pairing process went exactly as it should. Best of all, even when the Hearphones are neglected for weeks, the connection with an already paired device is instant upon powering on. A pleasant female voice talks you through the pairing process. Later, whenever the headset is turned on, the voice announces battery status and nearby paired devices.
The Bluetooth controls, found on one edge of the rectangular piece in the wire leading to the right ear are easily identified by touch. Controls include a square button at either end for up and down volume and a longer rectangular button between them that serves multiple purposes. When using Hearphones with an iPhone, you can summon Siri, initiate calls, answer or end calls, and control music or other audio content. Audio quality is as superb as Bose lovers expect it to be.
World Volume
Bose uses its noise-canceling technology to customize the way sounds around you are delivered to your ears. Even if you don't have a hearing loss yet, being blind or low vision can add difficulty to hearing specific sounds in noisy environments. You are in the midst of a crowded party and the din of so many voices is drowning out the conversation you are trying to have with the friend who is standing right in front of you. You are in a restaurant and the music is so loud that you can only hear the person beside you and you can't hear your friend at the end of the table.
You are using your computer while other people in your house are playing the television; you want to hear one and not the other.
Bose Hearphones enable you to zero in on a specific field of sound the way some devices help you isolate and magnify an image or specific block of print.
Focus
There are three options for focusing sound in the World Volume mode: Narrow, Front, and Everywhere. If you want to hear the computer or other sound source directly in front of you and not the party in the dorm room next door or TV in the family room around the corner, the Narrow mode will do just that. Your sound field will be focused in a short field, tuning in on the sound immediately in front of you and eliminating all others.
Front gives you more of a half circle of sound – that sound which is directly in front of you as well as to left and right. Everywhere picks up sound from 360 degrees around you.
At a restaurant with ten people, the narrowest focus enabled me to hear the person directly across from me clearly while reducing all other sound to a minor murmur. Front mode made it possible for me to hear almost everyone at the table without much background sound. Everywhere cranked up all sound in the restaurant equally, so that the din from other tables, the music from speakers, and the kitchen were as loud as the people on either side of me, rendering conversation impossible.
The controls for World Volume are two buttons on one narrow edge of the piece in the wire leading to the right ear. (Bose refers to this as an "inline remote.") Individually, the buttons are for increasing and decreasing the World Volume. So, pressing the two buttons simultaneously moves from Narrow to Front to Everywhere, with each emitting its own assigned tone. If you want to hear the person across from you in a noisy environment, you can set the mode to Narrow and increase volume until it is comfortable. Noise-canceling will shut out other ambient sounds while bringing in the single sound source with clarity.
The Bose Hear App
The Bose Hear app makes it possible to fine-tune the delivery of ambient sound even more than the controls on the headset itself. With the app, you can adjust the two sides separately, muting one ear, for example, if you want one ear to pick up sound naturally. You can adjust volume from 0 to 100 on either ear, balance the ears, adjust treble and bass, adjust the World Volume mode, and save up to ten additional custom modes for later retrieval.
The app did not work for me for either pairing attempt, but performs beautifully (and accessibly) for making adjustments on the fly to World Volume.
Caveats and Observations
The Bose Hearphones are not hearing aids. If, however, you have only a mild hearing loss and are not yet a candidate for hearing aids, these could certainly act as a personalized sound amplification product (PSAP). Even with normal hearing, the World Volume mode can serve as a wonderful tool for amplifying certain sounds while diminishing others. Setting the sound to Narrow or Front, for example, can tune you in to one or two people in a group, or to your TV or computer while tuning out the hammering down the hall.
For someone with a visual impairment, using World Volume while navigating outdoors or any unfamiliar area can be unsafe. When World Volume mode is invoked, especially if you are using the Everywhere mode, it's difficult or impossible to localize sounds. With every ambient sound in your environment cranked up, determining exactly where that person shouting at you is located can be a serious challenge. And if you have the headset on and the World Volume turned extremely low, the headset will block ambient sounds altogether.
Used in controlled situations, however, the Bose Hearphones can generate genuine amazement. With Everywhere turned on, I heard sounds in my house that I never knew were here. With Front mode turned on while sitting in front of my Bose Wave System, music sounded more pure to me than it had in a long while. For me, a person who has worn hearing aids for decades, wearing the Bose Hearphones meant taking out my hearing aids, which creates a different kind of sound and required a bit of adjustment. For phone calls and listening to audio content on the iPhone, it's an excellent device.
No product from Bose is sold at bargain prices. Hearphones are $500 from Bose.com, and $400 if purchased from Amazon. Both sources allow a 30-day trial, after which headsets can be returned for a full refund. For me, they were well worth keeping as one more valuable tool in my technology toolbox.
This article is made possible in part by generous funding from the James H. and Alice Teubert Charitable Trust, Huntington, West Virginia.
Related articles:
- Bose Frames, Apple AirPods 2nd Generation, and Plantronics M180 Headset: A Practical Guide to Three Bluetooth Earphones for People with Visual Impairments by Aaron Preece
- The ActiView App from Empowered Entertainment Puts Audio Description In Your Pocket by Jamie Pauls
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