Revolutionary solid titanium micro ear plugs that isolate you from noise like never before.
Read More
7,299
backers
£370,867
pledged of £25,000 goal
This project will be funded on .
Replay with sound
Revolutionary solid titanium micro ear plugs that isolate you from noise like never before.
About this project
ISOLATE® - At last you can switch off your ears to noise!
Now you can have perfect sound isolation for...
- Sleeping (Undisturbed nights with perfect isolation from snoring and other noises)
- Travelling (On planes, trains and automobiles, enjoy silence when travelling)
- Concerts and Clubs (Enjoy the most incredible sonic details at very safe levels)
- Motorsports (Total protection from very loud and painful noises)
- Motorbikes (Micro in size and hidden inside your ear, they won't interfere with your helmet)
- Working (Protect your ears against permanent hearing damage)
- High Impact Sounds
ISOLATE® is not like any other ear plug; it blocks all sound from entering your ears including bass frequencies for the first time ever without any batteries or annoying re-charging. ISOLATE® is micro in size and so can be used anywhere to isolate your ears from unwanted noise.
Flare's patent-pending ISOLATE® Technology
Flare's founder and inventor, Davies Roberts, could not understand why traditional ear plugs were so bad at doing their job. When he looked into it, he realised that ear protection was taking the wrong path in using plastics, silicones and foams to absorb sound.
“Imagine wearing a helmet all the way over your head made of plastic or foam. What would you hear? The sound level would be reduced but the effect of the plastic resonating and foam muffling the sound would not be so nice to listen to. Both these materials do stop some sound but, frankly, are not that great at it, especially at lower frequencies.
When low frequencies get past traditional ear protection, details get lost and you're left in a world of booming bass and sub-sonic pressure which you can't wait to escape from. No noise cancelling electronics can deal with this muffled sound that comes from the plastic and foam parts of such devices.
But imagine putting your head all the way into an inch-thick, solid titanium helmet encased in foam. Now what would you hear?
...
Exactly!
That’s just what I thought."
Solid metal is a good conductor and so had been discounted as unsuitable for use in ear protectors. Until now. What Davies has discovered is that, in order to conduct sound, metals need a direct connection. Without a direct connection solid metals block sound perfectly!
"When you isolate a small piece of metal or dense material in soft foam inside your ear, sound waves can't penetrate from the flexible medium of air and it becomes the perfect isolator. Understanding this principle is what inspired us to develop the perfect ear plug. We want to revolutionise hearing protection!"
Replay with sound
Block Low Frequencies
Traditional ear plugs and defenders cannot block low frequencies from entering your ears very well. As well as being unpleasant to listen to, they make sound muffled, leaving you feeling disconnected, or as if you are underwater. Low frequencies produce the most energy, and this is not absorbed properly by the plastic or foam used in traditional ear protectors.
ISOLATE® technology works by a revolutionary approach in the materials used. Noise is blocked by a dense material suspended in soft memory foam to isolate it from the effects of conduction. The result is total direct noise isolation for your ears for the first time ever without any electronics!
As you can see by the data below both ISOLATE® versions totally out-perform the traditional foam earplug. ISOLATE® Pro Titanium has an additional 8-9dB (more than double the attenuation) with the lowest frequencies, which is crucial for blocking out the deepest snoring, high impact sounds and enabling you to hear the most details in music. If you would like to see how this test was carried out please check the update page here
3D DRAWING
Independant Reviews
Replay with sound
Cool Design
A good design will stand the test of time.
Good design is not just about achieving a good technical result, it's also about great visual identity. Modern industrial design is Davies's passion; clean lines and symmetrical shapes which never date. This is demonstrated in the design of ISOLATE® with perfect form and optimal functionality to create a pleasing visual simplicity.
ISOLATE® has also been designed to last forever. The tips, which can be size-selected for best fit, are replaceable when they get damaged or wear out, but you will never need to replace the ISOLATE® metal component.
ISOLATE® has ridges on the tip connector that allows the tip to lock into place. To remove a tip, squeeze the tip and twist and pull the body. To put on a new one, simply push it into place with a satisfying click.
The tips used with ISOLATE® are called EARFOAMS®. They are very easy to fit and come in small, medium and large sizes to ensure ISOLATE® will fit everyone. A set of each size is included with each ISOLATE® pair.
Dimensions and Weights
ISOLATE®
Solid Aerospace Aluminium - 17.5mm long, 8.5mm diameter, 1.76g
ISOLATE® PRO
Solid Titanium Grade 5 - 17.5mm long, 8.5mm diameter, 2.86g
Ears ringing? That's the sound of damage.
If you enjoy concerts, gigs and music as much as we do, then you’ll know exactly what we’re talking about. Ringing in the ears and cotton wool hearing in the morning are the result of hearing damage.
Conventional plastic or foam earplugs don't work very well. They are fiddly, uncool and no fun to wear, especially at concerts and gigs because they make music sound muffled and you feel disconnected, or like you are underwater.
Using ISOLATE® ear protectors, you still hear the music, but only through bone conduction which is safer and a much nicer experience than the muffled rumble you get with traditional ear plugs.
Sonic Forcefield
To use ISOLATE® is to feel like you are inside a sonic force field of protection. You hear more detail in music as the peaks of sound that normally stress your hearing have been brought down to a calm, enjoyable and balanced level. Even whistles and screams around you blend into the music rather than ripping into your ears. You are in your own safe world, but as you can still hear every detail from bone-conducted sound, and feel all the bass in your body, you get all of the pleasure and none of the pain of the experience.
This sonic forcefield can protect you anywhere you want to block out irritating sounds such as...
- Snoring
- Sleeping
- Plane, train, bus, car or bike noise
- Noisy work environments
- Motorcycling
- Motorsport
- Anywhere else you need isolation from unwanted noise
How it all began
For as long as he can remember, Flare’s founder Davies Roberts has been fascinated by all things sound and noise related.
Whether it’s working on ways to improve sound quality in loudspeakers and earphones or developing ideas in noise cancelling products, one thing has remained constant: his drive to address existing issues and to create revolutionary products that improve our experience of sound.
Block Sound... Don't try to absorb it!
Traditional earplugs, particularly the standard foam ones, rely on absorption principles to attenuate sound. Trying to absorb sound in this way requires a large amount of material to work well: examining anechoic chambers demonstrates this with their foot-long spikes of foam.
When restricted to less than an inch of material in an ear plug, absorption is not the way to do it. Absorption on this small scale will result in muffled sound in the high and mid frequencies and little to no reduction in bass frequencies. This imbalance is stressful and tiring.
ISOLATE® blocks noise from entering the ears and attenuates all frequencies. Noise is not able to conduct into the patent-pending technology that ISOLATE® uses which means that users are effectively able to turn off their ears to direct noise. The solid metal core of ISOLATE® is almost all the way through the tip which creates a sonic barrier deep inside your ear to block noise. The only sound you hear while using ISOLATE® is from bone conduction which results in an enjoyable and balanced experience with safe sound detail.
EARFOAMS®
EARFOAMS® come in small, medium and large sizes.
There is a wide variety of memory foam mixes that form ear tips. Getting the formulation just right is the key to a great tip! Flare has developed a special blend of memory foam to be ultra-comfortable and mould perfectly into every ear using the body's own heat. The formulation we use also has as high a resistance as possible to ripping or breaking down.
If our campaign is successful, EARFOAMS® replacement tip packs will be available before reward deliveries commence.
EARFOAMS® main features:
- Incredibly soft with maximised 'bounce-back' memory retention
- Increased resistance to ripping and breaking down
- Very comfortable to use
- Designed to fit every ear size
The Metals
- Aluminium is a great metal that is strong, lightweight and cost effective for use in ISOLATE®. It can be anodised into various colours to match your look and image. Ear protection just got cool!
- Titanium is an exceptional metal and is therefore used in ISOLATE® PRO. Being harder than aluminium it maximises isolation and can stand serious abuse without breaking. Titanium inside your ear, how cool is that?
Special Editions
Aerospace Manufacturing
Flare uses a British aerospace certified supplier to manufacture the metal component of ISOLATE® and ISOLATE® PRO. Milled on a robotic precision lathe, the quality, look and feel is far superior to most other mass manufacture techniques. Seeing the capabilities of our supplier along with the incredible quality of the components they produce, convinced us to use this highest standard of aerospace manufacturing.
Fitting Instructions
Fitting ISOLATE® is a breeze!
First select the size of tip that suits your ears. Then simply squeeze and roll the tip with your fingers to squash the memory foam down and push deep inside your ear. The end of the ISOLATE® body should sit fully within the Concha of the ear. Fitted correctly you should not hear any direct sound through your ears, you will just hear bone conducted sound!
A message from the inventor
“Hearing is an incredibly important sense that should be cherished and respected.
I have spent the last decade on a journey to understand why audio devices were not delivering sound properly to our hearing. I have managed to unlock the issues surrounding sound generation and have discovered solutions which Flare is now using to develop various audio products.
I also became aware that being able to switch off noise was equally important to everyone. I have had many conversations over the last couple of years with people across the world about the failure of traditional ear plugs. I realised that something was clearly going wrong with traditional products and in some cases people were suffering from hearing problems as they either did not get on with using traditional devices and abandoned them, or the products failed to protect people properly when they did use them.
I am very proud of ISOLATE®; I believe that it will enable a quality of life improvement for many people who sleep, work or socialise in noisy environments. I believe that it will keep people’s hearing safe and protected so that ears retain good hearing ability for as long as possible throughout life.
We have a truly exciting new earphone product on the way that we are currently working on which will be launched on Kickstarter in September. This new earphone delivers all music live in your head, every track sounds like nothing you have ever experienced before and how it was intended to be heard. It is a truly exciting and ear opening sound experience. There has been a lot of work over the last year developing it to ensure that everything is perfect before we launch it on Kickstarter in September.
I believe that music should be amazing to experience & safe to listen to and you should be able to isolate yourself from noise that is dangerous or annoying… LONG LIVE EARS”
Davies Roberts - Flare Audio
Why Kickstarter?
If you back our campaign and we are successful you will be enabling us to produce ISOLATE® so that you and everyone else who backs us can enjoy perfect isolation from noise.
Last year when we ran our first Kickstarter campaign, we were successful and raised £177,277. We produced the product and delivered on time. Our backers loved the product and reviewers did too.
At Flare we don't want to just make average products. We want to invent new technologies, using the highest quality manufacturing techniques to produce products that change people's lives. We need your support so that we can bring ISOLATE® to life.
As a reward to our backers we have set reward pricing as low as possible. This is your chance to get hold of a set of ISOLATE® and/or ISOLATE® PRO before anyone else and at a discount ahead of us appointing retailers if our campaign is successful.
We have also created special reward packages for retailers at the lowest possible prices. You can be one of the first to retail ISOLATE® and/or ISOLATE® PRO and be one of the first to join the hearing protection revolution!
Risks and challenges
Current production stage:
We have developed the technology, produced various prototypes to finalise the exact design and made a small production run to iron out mass production issues. We have tested ISOLATE® and ISOLATE® PRO in many ears and in various high level sound situations to confirm total ear isolation including sending samples to reviewers to independently confirm our results. We have also bench tested ISOLATE® and ISOLATE® PRO in-house to confirm the expected high level dB attenuation.
The next production stage:
ISOLATE® and ISOLATE® PRO will be undergoing CE (Europe) and FCC (USA) certification testing in late July/early August to certify the product before any deliveries commence. This will give us official test figures that show dB attenuation levels achieved from both products that we will publish.
Final production stage:
If we reach our target immediate orders will be placed with our suppliers to minimise reward delivery times and we will start preparing the products so that we are ahead of the curve once we receive funds (which is 14 days after the campaign ends).
Our aerospace supplier:
Our British aerospace supplier is certified to EN 9100:2009 (aerospace standard) which ensures the highest possible standard of quality and consistency.
Un-expected issues:
We have done our best to plan for every possible issue but obviously un-expected issues can arise, we will keep our backers informed at all times should this happen.
Deliveries:
We will be using signed for delivery with insurance to post out all rewards, delivery times will vary from a couple of days to a week or so depending on your location in the world, a tracking number will be sent to you.
Quality Control:
Every product will be packed and checked by the Flare team before it is shipped to backers.
Customer Service:
Coming from pro-audio, we know how important customer service is. The Flare team is contactable 7 days a week for any questions or issues with our products.
FAQ
-
Both the aluminium and titanium are fantastic ear protectors!
However, titanium is a denser metal than aluminium and so attenuates more lower frequencies.
This makes Titanium ideal for protecting against high impact sounds but still enables you to enjoy listening to loud music without damaging your ears. -
Bass frequencies are best felt on our bodies, not in our ears. When bass frequencies hit our ears with loud music the bass pressure damages detail perception, we lose our ability to hear refined, higher frequency details. By isolating our ears from low frequency pressure our bodies still feel the bass but our ears hear more detail through bone conduction.
-
We will ensure that every reward is delivered in September as per the estimated delivery date.
We can't wait for everyone to start enjoying Isolate! -
Once the campaign has ended Kickstarter process all the pledges and we send a survey out to be completed by all our backers. This is where you add your address and other important information.