Sonarworks: personalised sound

Helmuts Bems is the co-founder of Sonarworks, a Latvian audio tech company on a mission to bridge the gap between sound creators and listeners. They use data technology and machine-learning to better understand the end-user and tailor the sound accordingly: “Within minutes, we will find a better sound for 82% of people.”

Data-driven personalised sound

“Essentially we make sound personal,” Helmuts explains.

These individual preferences/differences are related to factors like age (hearing loss), gender (men typically have larger ear canals), geography or music taste. The company’s patented data-driven technology can be used across multiple devices and platforms. Clients range from the B2B side, like sound engineers, artists, producers, creators and other professionals, to the consumer-side, like manufacturers of electronic devices that will integrate the technology into their product. “A bit like Intel Inside,” Helmuts explains. “Today, over 70,000 recording studios globally and 100,000 consumers use our technology. But we’re expecting a lot of growth in the consumer space, with contracts for over 1 million devices already signed.”

Financing research

In this process of growing the consumer side of the business, Sonarworks received an equity investment from Karma Ventures, a venture capital firm backed by the EIF. “We were looking to raise extra funds because we were about to start growing our consumer-side journey and needed to build consumer products. The funds went mainly into R&D and product development,” Helmuts explains. “Research is very important in this kind of work and these investments in earlier stages allows us to offer jobs that are better paid and bring in higher calibre people. That can make all the difference.”

We built everything from the ground up. Most of this stuff has never been done by anyone else, and nobody else is trying to do it either. ”

- Helmuts Bems, co-founder

Taking over the industry

It’s not an exaggeration to say that Sonarworks is riding the digitalisation wave that is taking over the audio industry as it shifts from analogue to digital. “If you look at devices that play the sound back to you, they’re still fundamentally analogue hardware devices. But more and more they’re becoming digital. Once you digitalise devices, you have new capabilities. With processing power, we can change the way sounds sound and with digital technology, sound performance isn’t fixed to the hardware any more and you can really change it.”

Making an impact through elderly care

“Elderly care will in one way or another relate to all of us. Life expectancy is increasing year on year, with the Estonian average now having reached 75 years. Proper services to care for the elderly are increasingly needed, especially for those suffering from dementia and other health issues”.

“We want people to enjoy their lives” concludes Ermo, “we are also working hard on changing perceptions in Estonia to remove the stigma associated with care homes".