Golden Hearing & Sonical showcase personalised music optimisation at NAMM

Golden Hearing and Sonical used NAMM 2026 present their ongoing collaboration, demonstrating how perceptually driven software and device-agnostic hardware can deliver genuinely personalised music reproduction for listeners with hearing variation.

Golden Hearing develops software technologies focused on improving music perception for listeners with hearing impairment, addressing a gap not served by conventional hearing correction or consumer EQ approaches. 

Central to this work is the newly developed Golden Hearing Music Perception Test, designed to evaluate how individuals perceive key musical attributes, including pitch, timbre, dynamics, and spatial information.

Crucially for music professionals, the test is being designed to assess perception well beyond the traditional 8 kHz audiometric boundary, extending up to 16 kHz and potentially higher. This expanded bandwidth reflects the reality of modern music production, where high-frequency content plays a critical role in timbral accuracy, spatial definition, and overall musical realism.

Based on the test results, Golden Hearing’s software generates a personalised optimisation profile that compensates for perceptual differences rather than applying generic frequency correction. These profiles can be deployed across multiple playback formats - including headphones, earbuds, and hearing aids—delivering a more balanced and musically coherent listening experience without altering the creative intent of the mix.

Through integration with Sonical’s Remora platform, Golden Hearing’s optimisations can be applied externally, independent of any single audio ecosystem. Remora provides a high-quality, low-latency hardware environment that enables personalised processing without locking users into proprietary headphones, playback apps, or hearing devices.

“One of the key challenges in audio today is that even the best playback systems assume a ‘standard’ listener,” said Gary Spittle, CEO of Sonical. “By combining Golden Hearing’s perceptual intelligence with Remora’s flexible, device-agnostic architecture, we’re able to apply truly personalised optimisation outside of any closed ecosystem—without compromising audio quality, latency, or creative intent.”

“Music perception doesn’t stop at the limits of traditional audiometry,” added Nouri Khalass, COO & CTO of Golden Hearing. “By extending our testing well beyond 8 kHz, we’re able to capture perceptual nuances that are fundamental to how music actually sounds and feels. Working with Sonical allows us to translate those insights into real-world listening experiences that respect both the listener’s hearing profile and the integrity of the music.”

Together, Golden Hearing and Sonical are advancing a shift away from one-size-fits-all audio processing toward perception-aware music reproduction, particularly for listeners whose hearing profiles are not adequately addressed by standard playback systems.