You won’t find a better pair of earbuds on the market, without having to remortgage your home. Jack Wallen/ZDNET
When it comes to Android, one of the first pieces of security advice I give to people is to only install apps that are absolutely necessary. Follow that advice and the likelihood of you winding up with ransomware or other malicious software on your phone drops dramatically.
For a decade, I’ve hung my hat on that advice — and it has served me well.
Also: The best headphones
However, I recently reviewed the Denon PerL Pro earbuds, which completely blew me away. One of my review criteria is that sound equipment should be experienced as the manufacturer intended. Sure, I can adjust EQ to my liking, but that’s not a true representation of how the hardware sounds — it’s artificial.
Yet after the review, I was curious if the headphones had more to offer. On top of that, I wanted to see if there was a firmware update — something that can only be done on such devices by way of an app. And so, I installed the Denon Headphones app from the Google Play Store, created an account, inserted the earbuds into my ears, and let the software do its thing.
I was, as you might expect, skeptical. But Denon rolled its eyes and said, “Ready for some magic?”
The first thing the app did was to test the seal of the headphones.
Also: The best noise-canceling earbuds: Bose, Sony, and more compared
The next part, which is where my skepticism really hit its stride, was that the app tested the headphones against my hearing to create a personalized profile to improve the sound.
The Denon Headphones app adjusts the headphones according to your hearing needs. Screenshot by Jack Wallen/ZDNET
Various sounds came through the heaphones. As the sounds bounced off my eardrums, blobs moved around a circle on the app, stretching beyond its boundaries like they were trying to escape. A couple of minutes later, the process was finished and I was ready to listen again.
Of course, I expected the PerL Pro earbuds to sound the same as they did before I installed the app. But wow, was I wrong.
These earbuds had already blown me away once but, thanks to the app, their depth and clarity had improved to such an extent that I would have sworn I was listening through a pair of seriously high-quality, over-the-ear headphones.
Also: Forget AirPods Pro: These Bose noise-cancelling earbuds sound…