5 Audio Features Every Bose Headphone User Must Try

There are plenty of advanced audio features you’ll find among the best headphones for audiophiles, but Bose isn’t like everyone else. If you’ve done any research on Bose headphones, you may have come across a handful of terms that allude to some of Bose’s internal engineering. We also know that deciphering a bunch of unexplained terminology can be exhausting, so we’ve put together this roundup of five audio features you’ll only find on Bose headphones and earphones.

Although many headphone manufacturers let you create custom sound profiles in their companion apps, Bose takes it a step further with its CustomTune technology. This is a calibration feature that automatically adjusts sound output and noise cancellation based on the unique shape of your ears.

Launched by John Rule, PhD, senior systems engineer at Bose, CustomTune leverages algorithms and acoustic engineering to optimize audio in real time. Calibration involves a tone, or dull noise, that the user’s ear naturally amplifies and bounces back to the microphones for analysis. From there, your CustomTune headphones will begin analyzing and adapting to ambient sound, adjusting the treble, mids, bass, and noise cancellation to best suit your hearing and listening space.

Introduced with the Bose QuietComfort II headphones, CustomTune has since rolled out to both generations of Bose’s QuietComfort Ultra headphones. It’s also the kind of algorithmic feature that gets smarter and more predictive the more you use it, so give it a try.

Once enabled, Immersion Mode combines spatial audio with Bose noise-canceling technology to create a wider, more immersive soundstage. You’ll also have the choice of two unique presets: Still Image and Motion. The former is great when you’re seated and gives the impression that there are a pair of speakers right in front of you. The Motion preset helps preserve the wider, mixed soundstage while you walk or run.

Immersion mode may seem more like a clever trick than a legitimate up-blender, but it works well. While Bose isn’t the only audio company dabbling in upmixing and head tracking, Bose’s Immersion Mode does a fantastic job of enhancing stereo audio for music, movies, shows, and video games. On the other hand, a feature like Sony’s 360 Reality Audio Upmix is ​​best used for movies and shows.

Technically, Bose’s Cinema mode is really just a spatial audio extension, but the software does an exceptional job of tweaking dialogue and background effects. Cinema Mode also works in tandem with Bose’s powerful noise cancellation, so your headphones and earphones will be continuously monitored and optimized for your listening environment.

Theater Mode can be used with Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones (2nd Generation) and Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones (2nd Generation). You should also make sure that you are using the latest version of the Bose app.

Active noise cancellation (ANC) can sometimes drown out too much sound, which is why most headphone and earphone manufacturers include an ambient or transparency listening mode. As you might guess, Bose does this too, and the company has also cooked up a feature that makes ambient listening even better: ActiveSense.

ActiveSense is a dynamic noise-cancellation feature available only in Aware mode (It must also be enabled). This works when a sudden spike in unwanted noise is detected in your listening space. ActiveSense then steps in to reduce volume and distortion that could damage your hearing.

Generally speaking, most ambient listening modes will only amplify the sounds around you. But Bose’s ActiveSense technology adds the brand’s industry-lauded adaptive ANC to the fold. So instead of making you choose between ANC-only listening or ambient-only listening, Bose has opted for the best of both worlds.

Open earbuds continue to grow in popularity, and the Bose Ultra Open Earbuds are a great example of air conduction done right. Unlike bone conduction, which literally relies on vibrations passing through the facial bones to create sound, air conduction directs frequencies into your ear canal. Bose Ultra Open Earbuds sit outside your ear, and the earbud driver directs sound to your inner ear.

But Bose also added a bit of secret sauce to the dish: a feature called OpenAudio. A patented audio amplifier, OpenAudio enables Ultra Open headphones to deliver crisp, clear, detailed sound to your ears without sacrificing treble, bass, or other important parts of the mix. OpenAudio also helps reduce sound leakage and provides even louder ambient listening than you’d get through Aware mode on the Bose QuietComfort Ultra headphones.

Preserving as much audio as possible is one of the main challenges headphone manufacturers face with bone and air conduction technology. Still, we’re not surprised that Bose has already found a way to make open-ear listening as good as it can be.