Powered by voice recognition and artificial intelligence, Vinci is your personal assistant, music studio, phone and so much more.
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532
backers
$133,633
This project will be funded on .
About this project
Vinci believes in a future where your headphones are the central hub of your connected world. Over the last two years we've been testing and perfecting a smart, wireless headphone that is controlled by your voice and powered by cloud technology, with no connection needed to your mobile phone.
Ask for updates on your bus schedule and Vinci tells you in real-time. Use voice commands to queue a music playlist or text your brother. Allow Vinci to make recommendations based on your body vitals or preferences. Be transported by Vinci’s 3D sound technology, bringing a virtual reality listening experience to your headphones.
Vinci's Early Bird Special is $99 for your first Vinci and $149 for your first Vinci Pro.
CNET - "A pair of flashy headphones that actually sound pretty damn good."
Engadget - “Vinci smart headphones are the real deal.”
Android Central - “The world’s most ambitious wireless headphones.”
Slashgear - “Forget Apple AirPods...”
Wareable - “Is there anything this crowdfund gadget doesn't do?”
TechDissected - “Everything sounds crystal clear...For the price of $199 it’s hard to beat something so good in that price range.”
Visit Vinci on Facebook and Twitter. Find Press Kit here.
Voice-controlled and hands-free, Vinci connects you with information, music requests, directions, local venue recommendations, reminders and so much more.
Vinci is a standalone device, so there's no need to connect to or search your mobile phone.
Headphones include dual-mic noise reduction technology designed to filter ambient noise from the desired sound, which is especially useful in noisy environments.
Vinci senses and learns from your body vitals, activities, listening habits and preferences to make intelligent, real-time recommendations.
Vinci anticipates what you want — a more mellow song or a train line that’s not delayed — before you even realize you need it.
Headphones include an accelerometer, gyrometer, proximity sensor, optical heart rate sensor, GPS and compass to deliver impressive personalization.
Vinci is a standalone device with a powerful processor, 16-32 GB of storage and its own operating system, built on the Android platform. Vinci's platform technology is built in the cloud and is powered by natural language processing and artificial intelligence, so it gets smarter and smarter, learning from your speech patterns and preferences. Through its machine learning algorithms, the more you wear Vinci, the more intelligent and personalized it becomes.
With millions of sound tracks from massive music resources, Vinci ambitiously learns the abstractive representations of songs, powered by deep learning techniques. Sounds will be extracted as signals, and then fed into neural networks after pre-processing.
Bi-directional Long-Short Term Memory (Bi-LSTM) models the sequential patterns of inputs, while more than one layer of fully-connected neural networks (often known as Multi-Layer Perceptron) enables abstractive learning. User profiles are established by their behaviors (such as “like” or “dislike”) towards recommended songs. Such data are accumulated over time and modeled as temporal transition chains.
With statistics learned, preferences are learned accordingly. In this way, Vinci becomes smarter when decides what to recommend or not to recommend next time, based on "deep learned" song-user matching.
Vinci is super-easy to use and very intuitive.
Put the headphones on to autoplay music. Take them off and music pauses automatically.
Use either voice or touch control to easily change tracks.
Use touch control to adjust volume.
- Voice commands include keyword commands or hold to talk.
- Listen to text messages and voice messages read out to you by Vinci.
- Online and offline local storage means you can have anytime, anywhere access to your music, maps, information and more.
With Vinci, you can seamlessly connect to your favorite platforms:
The combination of incredibly accurate sound placement plus Vinci’s integrated head tracking sensors delivers premium quality and immersive sound.
Listen with your headphones to get the real effect of Vinci's 3D sound:
Use your headphones to get the real effect of Vinci's 3D sound recording capabilities:
Vinci Pro includes Advanced Noise Cancelling and Audio Transparency Mode.
We've been designing Vinci for two years now. Vinci works with industry-leading designers in both the US and China to develop a beautiful product for its global audience.
We're proud to have received numerous awards for its design, including:
Watch the response when people tried on Vinci Smart Headphones.
Replay with sound
Colors and options:
Product details:
Product specs
Combo Rewards Tiers:
$249 - Early Bird Vinci Couple (2X Vinci Regular of your choice)
$309 - Early Bird Vinci X Vinci Pro Combo (One Vinci Regular + One Vinci Pro)
$339 - Early Bird Vinci Pro Couple (2X Vinci Pro)
Distributor Pack - Vinci Regular Distributor Special ($5499)
Distributor Pack - Vinci Pro Distributor Special ($7999)
Note: After the Kickstarter, we will email all of our backers to allow them to choose colors.
Every Vinci backer enjoys a 7 days-no-questions-asked return and 30 days free exchange.
Founded in September 2014, Inspero Inc. was started by two MIT MBA Alumni, David Zhu and Max Wu. Their vision was to completely rethink headphones by inventing a new way to experience and interact with sound.
The team now consists of 40 talented engineers and designers with many years of experience from companies such as Intel, Oracle, and Microsoft, and from universities such as MIT, Harvard, RISD, and Parsons.
Vinci is based in Beijing with operations in both Shenzhen and New York. Vinci made a strategic decision to be based in China in order to take advantage of China’s robust and ever-innovating supply chain.
In October 2015, the company introduced its first Vinci headphones in China -- the device sold out within six months. The team at Vinci knew its dream of reinventing headphones and the way we interact with sound was a reality.
The fine print
International Backers: We will ship Vinci worldwide, with the exception of Argentina, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Myanmar/Burma, North Korea, Russia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, and Yemen. Please note that you will be responsible for duties, fees and taxes applicable to your region, which in the past have ranged from 0% to 20% in the US and EU countries, to as much as 200% for certain South American countries.
Estimated Delivery: Each reward tier may have a different estimated shipment month. While we do not expect these to change, it is possible that the estimated shipment month may shift. We will provide updates when/if the estimated shipment date changes. At anytime up until your headphone has shipped, you may request a full refund by emailing support@vinci.com
Warranty: We stand firmly behind our products. Each Vinci headset includes with a 30 day (after you receive it) money back guarantee and minimum 1 year limited warranty. Need help? We're here for you. If you have questions at any time, during or after the campaign has closed, you can always reach us at support@vinci.com
Disclaimers Notifications: Vinci headphones must be connected via either wifi, 3G or to a smartphone via Bluetooth in order to receive notifications and perform other functions. Heart rate monitor: Vinci’s heart rate (HR) monitor is intended to be a valuable tool that can provide an accurate estimation of the user’s heart rate.
The HR monitor is designed to attempt to monitor a user’s heart rate on a periodic basis. The frequency at which heart rate is measured varies and depends on the level and activity of the user. Vinci headphones are not medical devices and you should not rely on the accuracy of heart rate data for any purpose, especially for medical or health purposes.
Battery life: Actual battery life will vary based in part on cellular network provider, your location and other factors.
3rd party applications: For 3rd party applications that are not native to, or included with, Vinci’s operating software such as Spotify, you must have an account set up with these services to be able to use them with your Vinci device. Additional fees and costs may apply to any such services. Use of third party services is subject to the service’s own terms and conditions.
Wireless charging pad: Wireless charging pad is not included with regular Vinci, it is only included with Vinci Pro.
Trademarks: Trademarks and names that belong to third parties.
Water resistance: Vinci is splash resistant but not waterproof. Incidental exposure to water–like unforeseeable rain–won’t ruin your device, but submerging the device is not recommended.
Risks and challenges
We are confident that we have done everything possible to minimize risks and challenges to Vinci's Kickstarter backers.
Vinci and Vinci Pro are nearly complete. We’re currently ramping up at our factory and are ready to meet the estimated delivery times. We do not expect any changes to shipment, product or availability.
One of the major benefits of having our business based in China is that we are closer to the source of production and can also be highly selective, working with only the best suppliers and manufacturers. We have teams in New York, Beijing and Shenzhen, giving us unique oversight and control of the entire supply chain. In particular, our team based in Shenzhen overlooks all factory operations, ensuring both quality and control over the manufacturing process and ensuring that every Vinci component is accurately integrated and optimized.
With our previous comprehensive product and production testing, we are confident to deliver our backers a low-risk, high-quality product on time.
Learn about accountability on KickstarterFAQ
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No, Vinci can work completely independent from your phone. But, it can also connect to your phone via Bluetooth or wires.
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Currently, Vinci offers music streaming from your Spotify, SoundCloud, and Amazon Prime Music accounts. Through future OTA software updates, Vinci can be connected music content services, such as Google Play, Pandora, iHeartRadio, iTunes Music, and more. Alternatively, you can also upload songs directly into Vinci’s local storage.
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Vinci’s local storage is 16GB and Vinci Pro’s local storage is 32GB.
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Vinci Pro has several additional premium features. In addition to the extra 16GB of local storage, Vinci Pro also comes with wireless charging capability, active noise cancellation, and an elegant piano paint finish.
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You can log into WiFi directly on Vinci. Vinci is also enabled with standalone 3G connectivity that is compatible with AT&T and T-Mobile.
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Currently, Vinci supports English. However, we are quickly adding new languages in future OTA software updates.
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After the Kickstarter, we will email all of our backers to allow them to choose colors.
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The shipping cost covers: 1) Overseas shipping. The final product is assembled in China thus the shipping cost was calculated based on origin of manufacturing. 2) We really want to make sure the product arrives promptly and in its best condition. Thus the shipping cost covers quality packaging materials while we work with reliable shipping companies to do this.
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We are currently working with these music providers, including Spotify, Amazon Prime Music, and others to provide this feature, which is already enabled with the SoundCloud service on the device.
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Yes, users will be able to find local carriers in most countries that support either configuration of the bands below:
Config I: Supports Band 2 and Band 5 (1900MHz and 850MHz, North America)
Config II: Supports Band 1 and Band 8 (2100MHz and 900MHz, Asia, Europe, Australia)We will send out surveys at the end of the campaign for you to choose your desired configuration.
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Yes, additional language options is something we are definitely working on and will be available through future OTA updates.
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Yes, you can press the power button to turn off the screen while music continues to play. This will preserve your battery, allowing it to last up to 14 hours.
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Yes, we are definitely considering additional colors. Please stay tuned for updates.
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Playback via bluetooth will allow up to 50 hours battery life and via local storage will allow up to 12-14 hours.
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We care not only about users' music experience, but also most definitely their safety. So far, the device has been through rigorous tests related to cellular radiation, WiFi and Bluetooth. The device has passed the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) certification. We also optimized all WiFi and 3G signal to ensure smooth streaming while maintaining minimum power consumption.
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At the moment, to listen to Apple music, you can use bluetooth.
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Voice-assistance helps users save time by allowing the user to simply say any song title, artist name, or genre. Dictation actually can save people up to 3x the amount of time as typing. We believe voice-assistance will aid the current music listening experience: turning on your phone, logging in with a password, opening a music streaming app, manually searching or typing to find songs. With voice assistance, you can simply talk to choose songs. If you are vacuuming, lifting weights, shopping, or doing any other activities which may occupy your hands, voice assistance will help you be able to control your music without affecting your other activities.
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We currently support MP3, AAC, AMR, FLAC, WAV, AIFF formats.
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We are planning to provide SDK to our developers community to create exciting and innovative third party apps on our headphones. The third party apps will be available via our in headphone app stores. Stay tuned for more updates.
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So far, we have been testing mostly with standard American English, but we are planning to enable other accents (British English, Austrailian, etc.) very soon!