NuraTrue Pro review: High fidelity at a high price

You’ve been listening to music wrong.

That’s what audio nerds would have us believe, anyway. High-fidelity audio evangelists would argue that streaming services have killed music the way it was meant to be heard. The way the artist truly intended their music to be experienced, these sonic pedants would say as you try to inch away from them after they’ve cornered you at a party, is reflected in the masters. That master then gets compressed into a digital audio file and transferred to a streaming platform, losing quality every step of the way so that by the time it reaches your — gag! — wireless earbuds, you might as well be listening to William Hung fart through a length of garden hose.

Insufferable? Yes. But after a week with the NuraTrue Pro wireless earbuds, I think the audiophiles might be onto something.

Nura has positioned itself as the headphone manufacturer of choice for high-fidelity enthusiasts, and high-fidelity audio doesn’t come cheap, apparently. The NuraTrue Pros retail for $499, which makes them a full $100 dearer than the Apple AirPods Pro and $150 more expensive than the Sony WF-1000XM4 earbuds we named the best all-around wireless earbuds in Australia.

The NuraTrue Pros are currently available for pre-order via the Nura website, expected to ship this month. Nura says the earbuds will also be available at JB HI-FI.

Nura as a brand has centred its identity on custom tuning. When you download the Nura app and pair the earbuds, they’ll take you through a setup process to tune the earbuds to your hearing profile by playing tones and then measuring the echo produced by your cochlea. It’s all very sci-fi sounding, and could easily be dismissed as marketing gimmickry, but for the fact that it works. It really does produce an individual hearing profile that feels tuned specifically for you. The Nura app also offers a manual EQ if you want to spit in the face of all that audio science and just tune the sound yourself.

The unique selling proposition of NuraTrue Pro is lossless audio; CD quality sound over wireless earbuds. The caveat here is that only a tiny handful of phones natively support NuraTrue’s lossless technology over Bluetooth, so unless you happen to own an ASUS ROG6 or Zenfone 9, true lossless audio will remain beyond your grasp.

The good news, though, is that true lossless audio or not, these are exceptional sounding earbuds.

Listening through our in-house testing playlist, I couldn’t find a single fault with the clarity and nuance of the NuraTrue Pros’ sound. Every tiny detail, every instrument sounded rich and clear. Even songs I’ve listened to hundreds of times, like Radiohead’s “National Anthem” or “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” by The Beatles, came through with detail I’d never noticed before. Nura has made some big claims about the sound quality of these earbuds, and they’ve truly, fully delivered.

If such minutiae of musical fidelity excites you, the NuraTrue Pros are a natural pick. The company recently sweetened the pot by announcing a 90-day free trial of TIDAL Hi-Fi Plus with purchase. I’d never dipped my toe into Jay-Z’s streaming passion project before, but as a point of comparison, I listened to Taylor Swift’s Midnights on Spotify, and then again on TIDAL (I’m not even embarrassed). It may be the placebo effect, but I swear the audio quality was richer on TIDAL.

So, for audiophiles, the combination of some truly stellar-sounding earbuds and access to a high-fidelity streaming service might just be too much to pass up, even if it comes at an admittedly premium price. My one point of contention is that I couldn’t get them to the frankly ear-splitting volume I prefer. My long-term hearing will thank me for that, but present-day Adam likes to feel like his brain is under sonic assault.

Less impressive is the noise cancelling. While the NuraTrue Pros filter out most ambient sounds, anything louder than, say, your washing machine is probably going to make it through. Sure, you can jack up the volume to drown out outside distractions, but noise cancelling isn’t a strong selling point for these earbuds.

Multipoint audio, however, is a pretty strong selling point. NuraTrue Pro’s multipoint works a treat, and has no trouble intuitively switching between my phone and laptop. It’s handy for jumping onto Zoom calls and then back into listening to music without having to re-pair the earbuds.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I have to admit I have some seriously effed-up ear canals. Where your ear canals probably take the most direct path from the outside of your head to your cochlea, mine meander through several twists and turns. This means my ears angrily eject most earbuds like bouncers throwing a rowdy drunk out of a pub.

While the NuraTrue Pros, in a nice change of pace, stayed in and kept a decent seal, they did feel as though they were trying to slither their way out. That being said, they never actually fell out, even with some vigorous headbanging. But I did feel the need to constantly adjust them.

If you have normal, god-fearing ear canals instead of the grotesque mockeries of nature I have, you may find the NuraTrue Pros a better fit. They come with four pairs of silicone tips in varying sizes, as well as a pair of foam tips and two pairs of silicone wings, so there are plenty of options for finding a good fit.

What won’t change, in spite of your very normal and not horrifyingly misshapen ears, is just how heavy these things are. At 8.6 grams, they’re some of the heavier earbuds out there. Compared to Apple’s 2nd gen Airpods Pro at 5.3 grams, the NuraTrue Pro earbuds are like shoving a phonograph in each ear. I didn’t find them uncomfortable, even for periods of extended wear, but you’ll definitely be aware of the weight.

The heft and build quality mean that these feel like expensive earbuds, which they undoubtedly are. They’re IPX4 rated, which means they’re not going to be hurt by some sweat at the gym or the odd rain shower while running, but their weight would make me hesitant to want to wear them for rigorous physical activity.

Audio quality is definitely the selling point of the NuraTrue Pro earbuds, but they excel at battery life as well. You’ll get 8 hours of continuous play on a charge, which increases to an impressive 32 hours with the case. When you do need to charge, the earbuds fully charge in an hour, and just five minutes of charging time gets you an hour of playback.

For such protracted battery life, the NuraTrue Pro case is surprisingly compact. It’s one of the smaller cases among high-end wireless earbuds, measuring at just over 7cms long and 3.5cms tall. The case comes with a USB-C cable, but also supports wireless charging.

If your primary concern with wireless earbuds is sound quality, you’re unlikely to find a pair that bests the NuraTrue Pros. I can’t stress enough just how remarkable the clarity and depth of sound delivered by these earbuds is. This should put them high on the list for true audiophiles.

If your wishlist for wireless earbuds is a bit more varied, though, the NuraTrue Pros might not tick all your boxes. The noise cancelling leaves something to be desired, and they’re a bit too chonky for a high-impact gym session or a long run. Moreover, they’re some of the pricier high-end earbuds on the market, and the fact you can pick up the 2nd gen AirPods Pro for $100 cheaper might make some question whether there’s actually a $100 gulf in the sound quality between the two products..

Throwing a spanner in the works of all this is Nura’s subscription model. Instead of buying their products outright, Nura offers consumers the option of paying a monthly subscription fee, with the added sweetener of adding an additional device every 24 months at no extra cost (and nice little perks like the aforementioned TIDAL subscription). At the time of writing, the NuraTrue Pros are still in pre-order, so there’s no word on whether they’ll be added to the subscription model, or at what price. If they are, I’d be hard-pressed to pass up a bit more time with these earbuds.