As Rolling stone As we approach 180 Studios, just off The Strand in the heart of London, the excitement is palpable.
The launch of any new product from Dyson, the cyclonic vacuum cleaner giant, involves a touch of drama.
This time it’s no different.
As we enter the darkened art space, spotlights illuminate a blue stage where DJ George Plant brilliantly mixes house, techno and funk. The music fills the room and we benefit from the mixologist’s talents behind the improvised bar.
Jake Dyson, son of entrepreneurial engineer James Dyson, an enigmatic scientist who spent 15 years building 5,127 prototypes that eventually became the DC01, the world’s first bagless vacuum cleaner, also lives in the house.
After revolutionising the way we clean our homes, James Dyson reinvented the way we breathe with a range of air purifiers and transformed hair care with hair dryers and straighteners. Now, Dyson is turning his attention to the world of audio.
Following a gracious response from the world’s media, Jake Dyson tells the story of the company. His team, we learn, spent 30 years in anechoic chambers, studying sound and how to attenuate it in all of their products.
“Our vacuum cleaners, hair dryers and hair styling appliances have very high-speed motors and very high air pressures.” He adds: “20% of our engineering and research efforts are devoted to noise control.”
And it was the research that led to the big revelation.
OnTrac Helmet
The Dyson OnTrac headphones are the company’s first audio-only over-ear headphones. Its first audio-only, high-fidelity noise-canceling devices.
“There are eight microphones spread across both ear cups,” he explains. “These microphones detect all external noise, cancel it out, and reduce the sound by 40 decibels, effectively canceling out 97 percent of the audio frequency range in your ears.”
The new Dyson app, we learn, will also help protect your ears. “These microphones record that sound and send back to you on an app the sound that protected you and that was canceled out of noise,” he continues. “So if an ambulance or a police car drives past you, you’ll see a spike on your app. We want to show you how we protect your ears from too much noise and also how effective that noise cancellation is.”
The OnTrac’s specs are impressive.
“The headset is equipped with two neodymium drivers, one in each ear. These drivers are angled at 13 degrees, which allows the sound to be delivered directly into your ear. They produce deep bass and high-end sonic brilliance, offering sound quality between 6 Hz and 21 kHz,” he explains, proudly holding up a pair of headphones.
Under the headband, a compact and high-capacity lithium battery that offers the user 55 hours of non-stop listening. Enough to take a plane to Australia and back… and the night when you come back awake.
Dyson’s new initiative is bold. The headphone market has recently seen His bone Entering an arena already populated by brands like Bose, Sony, Sennheiser and more, Dyson is confident its new product offers the company’s unique perspective on design and invention.
These headphones are designed to sound as good as they look, the result of Dyson’s brainstorming that tested everything from Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture to hard rock and K-pop.
Want a custom kit? You got it. The initial release includes a variety of colorways from CNC Aluminum to CNC Copper, Ceramic Cinnabar, and CNC Black Nickel, plus a multitude of colored ear cushions and outer caps are available, for 2,000 possible combinations.
“Dyson’s mission in audio engineering is to preserve the integrity of the artist’s sound wave, without interference,” Jake Dyson said in a press release. “We also wanted to create headphones that people would enjoy, that they would be proud of.” Given what we’ve seen and heard, and the quality of their new product, Dyson should be just as proud as the customers who will wear them.
The devices are available directly from Dyson.com.au at AU$799.