We now need the support of crowd funding to ramp up into mass production and attract major retailers to stock ISOLATE®. By backing our crowdfunding campaign you will receive your ISOLATE® reward before online retailers commence selling the product.

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 plastic, silicone and foam 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!"

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 plugs.

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 four times the attenuation) with the lowest frequencies, which is crucial for blocking out the most irritating snoring, high impact sounds and enabling you to hear more detail in music.

ISOLATE® MiNi for a perfect night's sleep

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!

3D DRAWING

ISOLATE® 3D Drawing cross section

Independent Reviews

HiFi Pig review of ISOLATE Pro

RideApart review and road test

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 the majority of people. A set of each size is included with each ISOLATE® pair.

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
• Any high impact noise
• 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 extra small, 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

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?

Aerospace Manufacturing

Flare uses a British aerospace certified supplier to manufacture the metal component of the ISOLATE® family. 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. 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 soon.

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

Risks and Challenges

Current production stage:

ISOLATE® is in production, ISOLATE® MiNi is at Beta test stage.

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.

Deliveries:

Delivery times will vary depending on your location in the world.

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 expanding our customer services team due to the success of this campaign. If you have any questions please email info@flareaudio.com. Due to the amount of work we have to do response times are currently 2-3 working days and everyone is being responded too in the order an email is received. Thanks for your understanding during this very busy time.

Click here for our Refund and Returns Policy