Headphones that allow you to feel the music as well as hear it

Did you know that we humans do not just hear through our ears, but we can feel sound through our body? Human hearing is not very sensitive to low (bass) frequencies, and we tend to feel the sub-bass and bass frequencies more than we hear them. The experience of thunder, the thump from drums, rumbles in movie theatres and concerts, explosions etc. are all the low frequency audio range and this is something that we can significantly sense and perceive through our body.

To effectively reproduce such an audio experience, loudspeakers and home-theatre systems make use of multiple audio drivers dedicated for each audio spectrum and a sub-woofer unit which is dedicated for low frequency audio that we can feel in our body. However, this experience has been compromised in headphones due to the use of a single audio driver on each side and the lack of specialised audio technology that emulates a sub-woofer system. With these limitations, headphones are not equally effective for wide genres of music and lack a holistic and immersive audio experience.

Sonic Lamb believes that the audio industry in the recent decade has deviated from the core value of improving the audio experience and now wants to bring the focus back on sound and change the very method of reproducing sound in order to add a dimension to personal audio experience.

Created by Navajith Karkera and Jagath Biddappa, a duo of mechanical and electronics engineers, who developed the concept when experimenting on hearing implants and improvised a method of audio transmission without solely depending on the ear, they believe that the Sonic Lamb headphone revolutionises the personal audio experience. Using the patented Hybrid Driver Acoustics, the Sonic Lamb headphones combine the air and body conduction principle to enable people to both hear music (through ears) and, for the first time, literally feel it (through mechanoreceptors in the skin and through bone).  

The technology incorporates a full range audio driver to reproduce mid and high frequencies and then transfer it to the listener’s ear as sound waves via air, and a proprietary driver that converts audio signal into corresponding mechanical impulses and converts the earpads of the headphones into a virtual diaphragm. This mechanical impulse gets transferred from the earpads to the listeners skin and bone which gives the sensation of feeling the music. The Hybrid Driver Acoustics offers high fidelity audio and emulates a sub-woofer unit inside the Sonic Lamb headphone to provide an immersive audio experience – the likes of which can be currently experienced only live in-person, on multi-driver loudspeakers, cinemas and in home-theatres.

The technology also provides a low-frequency audio experience and very powerful bass response without fatigue because the low frequency audio is converted to a corresponding mechanical impulse and transferred to the skin and bone through the earpads instead of directly transferring the low frequency as air pressure waves into the ear.

Additionally, Sonic Lamb provides a control interface directly on the headphone which offers four modes of personalisation on-the-go (Hear, Feel, Immerse, Beast) to users. This feature enables the user to dynamically customise/personalise through the four modes based on music genre, preference and use-case (podcasts, calls/meetings, movies, gaming).

Other features

Enhanced calls and meeting: The Sonic Lamb headphones are integrated with two internal microphones, one dedicated to capture just the voice and the other to suppress ambient noise for calls and meetings. On top of that, the headphone also features an additional detachable boom for further enhancement of voice quality during important meetings and gaming sessions.

USB wired connectivity: The digital audio interface enables users to not just charge the Sonic Lamb headphones using the USB cable but also use it simultaneously for high resolution wired audio connection with laptop, PC, and smartphone for studio quality audio streaming [24bit, 96kHz]. Additionally, there is no need to carry an additional aux cable for a wired connection. Playback quality remains consistent across all of the streaming devices as there is no middle layer between the music source file and the headphone. The headphone directly streams audio data from the source file and users can simultaneously charge and listen to music via USB through any USB-enabled media device.

Custom setup and hearing test: A quick two-minute hearing test on the Sonic Lamb headphones and smartphone app allows users to create a custom tuned sound profile based on their individual unique hearing sensitivity.

Bluetooth: Multidevice connection capability enables users to connect the headphone to two different devices simultaneously both in Bluetooth only and Bluetooth + USB mode so that users can connect to their laptop for meetings or music and also answer calls or hear notification on their phone without having to deal with the hassle of switching the devices.

The Sonic Lamb headphones are available on Indiegogo from 9th November until 14th December with super early bird pricing starting at $199/£173. Delivery is expected in February 2023 available widely on e-commerce platforms from September 2023.