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Listening Optimizer

Welcome to custom sound for your head.

If you’re familiar with Yamaha home audio, you may know about the company’s groundbreaking AV receivers that feature YPAO™ (Yamaha Parametric room Acoustic Optimizer) — an advanced technology that determines the acoustics of your home theater room and calibrates audio parameters for optimal sound — and Surround:AI™, which optimizes DSP parameters for each scene of a movie in real time. Now, with their new line of wireless headphones, earphones and earbuds, the company is applying its home audio expertise to personal audio.

Yamaha engineers spent years developing Listening Optimizer, an adaptive technology that analyzes the fit of your headphones and the wearing conditions in real time to optimize the sound for the best listening experience possible. This feature is available in the YH-E700A wireless noise-cancelling headphones and EP-E70A wireless noise-cancelling earphones.

Good Fit is a Must

Headphone devotees know that it all starts with the fit. Of course, over-ear headphones and in-ear earphones have to be comfortable if you’re going to wear them for long periods of time, but the fit also affects the sound. Because everyone’s head size and shape are different (and even ear canal size may vary from right to left), headphones or earphones that fit comfortably on one person may not fit nearly as well on — or provide the same sound quality to —a different individual.

The seal between your headphones and your ears (or between your earphones and your ear canal) affects the sound pressure level, which in turn affects the way you perceive high and low frequencies. Unlike traditional technologies that only take a one-time measurement to make corrections to the audio, Listening Optimizer provides a truly personalized listening experience by using a high-quality in-ear microphone to take real-time measurements of this seal for 20 seconds, comparing the signal from the microphone to the playback source. It then applies correction over a five-second window, ensuring that the transition is not jarring, but is instead seamless and hardly perceptible. This cycle of 20-second measurement, followed by 5-second correction, is repeated continuously. The result is optimal sound for the way your headphones and earphones fit you in all conditions, whether you’re on an airplane with lots of background noise or walking down a quiet path.

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