This is a brilliant idea if it actually works.
Our team is proud to present the Yuni — the first headphone offering true stereo sound for individuals with unilateral deafness or hearing impairment!
Since most headphone manufacturers ignore the needs of unilaterally deaf listeners, the options have been limited. Either miss half the music, or find a way to collapse the two stereo channels into a single channel and listen with one ear. But the interference between the two channels coming from the same speaker will boost some frequencies and cut others, resulting in a messy, cramped sound.
The Yuni gets around this problem with a revolutionary new stereo technology (patent pending) that places both stereo channels in a single earpiece, but with two separate speakers instead of just one — one above, and one below the ear opening. This design takes advantage of our ear’s natural shape, which functions to help us localize where sound is coming from. With the Yuni, you can hear and distinguish the two channels, identifying which sound is coming from which speakers. Even better, the music will sound truly spacious, not squished, and you can finally hear true stereo panning as the sound moves from one channel to the other! If you’re a unilaterally deaf music-lover who has never experienced these effects through headphones before, it may be difficult to appreciate how much your music will open up and come alive when it’s played the way it was meant to be enjoyed…in stereo.
I have been ~75% deaf in my right ear ever since I suffered nerve damage from a viral infection 15 years ago (who knew you could go deaf from sinusitis‽). I can still hear music decently well if I use headphones, so I’m not sure if I need a Yuni. It would be great to try a pair and see if the quality of the listening experience improves significantly.
Check out: Yuni: A Headphone for People With Single-Sided Hearing Loss by Daniel Glass — Kickstarter
