Externally, Here Active Listening (HAL) earbuds are very similar to conventional wireless earphones.

What's special about them isn't how they reproduce audio, but how they capture it (with microphones) and process it. They act as a live equaliser in your ear, capturing real world sounds or live music and allowing you control the volume, filter out noises you don't want to hear and even remix it.

The Here One buds will let you filter and change the noise of the real world. Using the companion app, you can change frequency response, tune out things like baby screams and train screeches, or turn up the volume of the people in front of you.

To use "smart" headphones, you need to download a specially developed application for a smartphone in order to control the device. A unique audio coding system and microphone allow you to automatically suppress unnecessary sounds.

In the Here companion app, you'll find nine filters which at present you can't tweak: airplane, bus car, city, crowd, office (loud), office (normal), restaurant and subway. These all offer different levels of noise canceling and are designed to pick up and analyse the ambient noise in each of those different environments. Some (airplane, office) worked better than others so you'll probably play around with which works for you for the environment that invades your ears the most. None offer 100% silence, rather a much muted version of what's going on around you.