When Naomi and I founded Flare Audio in 2010, it came from something deeply personal, a belief that music should move us more than it does. That somewhere between the artist and the listener, something was being lost.
I became obsessed with understanding why.
Again and again, I kept hearing the same problem: resonance. Hidden reflections and distortions inside speakers, headphones and even inside our own ears were masking detail, smearing emotion and changing the way sound made us feel. Much of the audio world accepted this as unavoidable. I couldn’t accept that. I believed that if we could remove those distortions, we could bring people closer to the truth and emotional power of the music itself.
What began as a tiny three-person operation building loudspeakers in a garage became years of relentless experimentation. During the week, we designed and built systems by hand. At weekends, we tested them at gigs and festivals across the UK, pushing them hard in real-world environments where sound either connects emotionally or it doesn’t.
Those years led to the creation of our breakthrough technologies, Space and Vortex. Instead of trying to dampen resonance after it had already damaged the sound, I wanted to stop it from being created in the first place. The effect was transformative. Music felt more open, more human, more emotionally alive. You weren’t just hearing more detail, you were feeling more of what the artist intended.
Our systems went on to be used at major festivals including Bestival and the Isle of Wight Festival, as well as productions such as Mark Ronson and Katy B’s Anywhere in the World for the London 2012 Olympics. Later, producer Flood selected Flare for Node Live at the Royal College of Music because of its extraordinary ability to reveal the full dynamic range and emotional depth of sound while almost disappearing from the listening experience itself.
But deep down, I knew this journey was leading somewhere much bigger than loudspeakers. One question kept pulling at me:
If resonance can distort sound systems so dramatically, what is it doing inside our ears?
That question changed the direction of my life.
After bringing our technology into personal audio with products like R2 and later the crowdfunding phenomenon Isolate®, I began exploring the acoustic behaviour of human hearing itself. What I discovered was profound.
The ear is not simply a passive receiver of sound. Reflections inside the ear actively shape how we experience clarity, harshness, space, timing and emotion. In many ways, the ear itself was becoming part of the distortion.
Those discoveries ultimately led to Mirror Image Sound™, an entirely new approach to earphone and IEM design that works with the natural acoustic behaviour of the ear rather than fighting against it with aggressive electronic correction.
Every breakthrough along this journey has followed the same philosophy: remove secondary resonance and reveal more truth.
From huge festival sound systems to devices worn invisibly inside the ear, everything we have created has been driven by one pursuit, removing the barriers between people and the emotional experience of sound.
Flare Ultra IEMs are the culmination of that pursuit.
Not an iteration. Not another tuning exercise. But a complete reimagining of what personal audio can become when resonance no longer stands between you and the music.
For me, Flare Ultra is not just about hearing more. It’s about feeling more.
Davies Roberts, Co-Founder and Inventor
