Hearing Health Summer 2015 Issue Summer 2015 | Page 26

hearing health

Question 2:
How loud is too loud?

The upper safe volume limit,
according to the National Institute on
Deafness and Other Communication
Disorders, is 85 dBA (the sound of
heavy traffic or a school cafeteria).
Optimizing sound quality within that
limit was critical for satisfying the end
user—the kid.
“The traditional approach to
limiting volume can make music,
or speech, sound clipped and
distorted,” Grueskin says. “Our
volume-limiting
feature
was
painstakingly engineered so that
everything sounds great right up
to the maximum.” The headphones
deliver the “sweet spot” of limited
background noise and deliver

studio-quality sound—so there’s no
need to crank up the volume.
Question 3:
How do you make
headphones “cool”?

Getting the technology right was a
huge accomplishment. But the Puro
Sound team knew that they had to
make headphones that kids would
want to wear. They discovered that
the key criteria were: “Don’t hurt my
ears” and “Make them look cool.”
The problem with headphones
hurting was partly solved by the
soft foam ear pads that block out
noise. Plus, the headphone size can
be adjusted up to 15 inches (from
mid-ear to mid-ear, over the top of
the head); they’re designed to fit kids
from about age 3 through to the
mid-teen years.
Looking cool was a different
challenge. “Headphones have become
a fashion accessory, so it wasn’t an
uphill battle on that front,” Grueskin
says. “But the style did require some
work. The younger kids, ages 3 to 7
or so, don’t care that much—they’re
just happy to have headphones.
“By the time you get into the 8-plus
age range, kids want a style that looks

26 | hearing health | a publication of the hearing health foundation

Staff writer Kathi Mestayer serves
on advisory boards for the Virginia
Department for the Deaf and Hard of
Hearing and the Greater Richmond,
Virginia, chapter of the Hearing
Loss Association of America. See her
writing on the science of hearing at
BeaconReader.com.
Support a Cure:
hhf.org/donate

Photos courtesy of purosound

dialogue,” he adds. “So as a result,
users turn the volume way up, into
the hearing-damage zone.”
Making the headphones sound
“neutral” was a matter of making
them sound like a pair of highquality loudspeakers played in a
tuned listening room. Wehner
succeeded in engineering a more
realistic sound—full, balanced, and
clear across the frequency ranges.

a little like an adult. So we decided
on a style that looks very technical,
like a serious adult audiophile
might wear, and offer it in metallic
tan/gold and white/silver versions.”
For even more cool factor, Puro
created an app that allows you to tune
your music with a 16-band graphic
equalizer, including adjustable
presets for specific genres of music,
be it classical or country. Look for
the Puro EQ app on Apple iTunes;
a version for the Android operating
system is estimated to be ready the
second half of 2015.
Within days of launching the
headphones, Puro Sound fielded
inquiries from audiologists who
wanted to know more about them,
and how to get them for their
patients. Puro Sound launched “Ask
Our Audiologist” on its website,
where visitors can post a question
about hearing conservation, hearing
loss, hearing protection, or related
issues, and get an answer from a
licensed, experienced audiologist.
But the biggest question for
Puro Sound has been whether it is
developing headphones for adults.
The answer is yes. Stay tuned!