Iris is a relatively new audio company. It made a splash on Indiegogo and has backing from Queen drummer Roger Taylor.
Its sell: Iris designed a proprietary form of audio processing that comes with a whole stack of claims about “activating your brain” and recreating the experience of live sound in headphones.
And that tech is now available in its own set, the Iris Flow. These headphones cost $399 and make some big claims. But what is actually going on under the surface?
Iris Flow: The claims
Dig into the Iris Flow’s marketing materials and you’ll find a bunch of eye-catching statements. It’s the kind of stuff not usually associated with a pair of wireless headphones.
“Scientifically proven to activate flow state, a neurological state of simultaneous focus and relaxation, alongside complete engagement with what you are listening to,” says the Iris Flow’s Indiegogo page.
They stimulate “a positive neurological benefit through the increase in brain activity required to process all additional layers of sound unlocked by IRIS,” says the webpage.
“Our real-time algorithm adds missing quality and depth back,” apparently.
A shortcut to the flow state, sometimes called “getting in the zone”, could be a godsend for runners and anyone who listens to music while they work.
What’s going on?
I’ve spent the last three weeks using the Iris Flow headphones, to find out what’s actually going on. Using this set couldn’t be much easier.
They pair with your phone just like any other set of wireless headphones and you turn on the Iris audio algorithm by pressing a button on the side. An LED that sits under one of the cups lights-up, to let you know the headphones are doing their thing.
The Iris Flow’s USP is effectively digital signal processing. This is nothing unusual, but the specifics of it are unusual.
The meat of it is something called crossfeed. It’s where stereo feed is fiddled with to emulate the soundstage of a pair of speakers, by mixing up the channel balance a little, so “left” content is not just consigned to the left channel.
It’s not as simple as just letting the channels bleed into each other, though. Using a tone generator, you can hear the channels travel about in stereo “space” as you head up through the frequency range.
And they often around flipped, with more left information towards the right of the sound field, and vice versa.
A lot of digital signal processing like this is thoroughly over-baked, made to create a striking impression rather than to really maximise sound quality. But the Iris Flow’s is quite tasteful.
Play a mono track through these headphones and there’s only a slight difference to the sound, showing how much the crossed-channel effect dominates here.
The Flow mode does increase volume slightly too, which is a classic way for software sound modes to sound like they have a positive effect. It’s a cheap trick, but I can’t blame Iris too much in this case.
So, do these headphones suddenly make you more productive, more relaxed and happier? These parts, no surprise, seem like a big reach when you use the Iris Flow, because they are effectively extrapolated from the idea the headphones make your music more engaging.
This part they do, however. Audio placed in the far left of the sound field may not be where it should be anymore, but the emulation of a speaker-like or “live” soundstage really works.
Music sounds fuller, the sound field is more complex. And while several parts of the arrangement are pushed towards the centre, there’s no sense instruments and vocals are crammed into this central channel.
The Iris Flow may not work the way you expect after reading the company’s website, but they do “work”. Compare them with some of the top-performing headphones at the price and you can hear a few shortfalls in a pure sound quality sense, though.
The Iris Flow’s mids do not have the most natural, consistent texture, and there’s an occasional slight mid-range honk. Mid-bass is also not quite as disciplined as the very best, but that’s no surprise in what is still essentially a mass-market headphone.
Treble may be a little tame for some too. However, there is little else to complain about too loudly in the Iris Flow if you’re not too bothered about the lack of active noise cancellation. They have passive noise blocking only.
Battery life of up to 37 hours is great, wireless stability is solid and most of the parts that are silver-coloured are aluminium, not just metal-effect plastic.
Verdict
The Iris Flow have some interesting ideas, but the way they are marketed may make you expect a little too much from these headphones. They don’t have the jaw-dropper moment of the Nuraphones, which tailor their sound to your hearing.
These headphones appear to rely predominantly on crossfeed. It’s nothing new in a wider audio sense, but is just not the sort of feature seen built into headphones. It makes this pair’s audio more engaging, and the basic concept is sure to be explored further by others.
Apple has already started. It added “spatial” audio to its AirPods Pro earphones in iOS 14.
