hey everybody it's norm from tested and
today i'm going to be reviewing
a new product that really is one of
those gadgets that
to me is more interesting as a piece of
technology
or demonstration of technology and
product design
then it is honestly something that the
vast majority of you out there
are in the market for and that's because
it's something that none of us have
tried before and that is a
shoe with haptic feedback
built into it so these are the drop labs
episode 01s or the epo ones and what's
called
drop labs and it's from this new company
that was founded by the ex-ceo of
beats along with the inventor of this
tech
and their goal is to allow you to
basically feel
music and sound and all type of auditory
experiences uh
as a sensation through your feet so
those of you and us who love watching
movies
or listening to music we understand that
music and audio is yes primarily an
auditory experience but it's also
a physiological one as well something
that we can
feel whether we're going to a live
concert
or watching a movie in cinemas you know
when you have the vibrations of those
giant speakers and subwoofers
we can actually feel that that is one
part of the
haptic sensation the sensory experience
of
music and movies and video games and so
shraplabs wants to bring that into
something that you can experience at
home
and also be mobile and so they set out
to build a shoe
that has essentially a subwoofer built
into it
and you know they've accomplished that
so if you look at the
form factor of the shoe here it is you
know looks like
a typical sneaker we can also tell
that there's a seam line here that's
because in the soul
here is basically all that technology
they had this
kind of constraint this limitation of
designing something that we all are
familiar with which is
a sneaker a shoe but then packing in
what you would need to have
haptic feedback so underneath you can
actually see
this red circle represents where they
have their tactile transducer their base
shaker their subwoofer
it's underneath here and then the back
uh there
you have the electronics the sound
processing as well as a battery
rechargeable battery
and then in the back of the shoe here
actually some controls
and a charging port uh as long along
with
a a line in for a direct signal
and the user experience is interesting
so
there's a companion application that you
download on your smartphone
essentially you tether your smartphone
to the shoe
as a bluetooth device and the shoe
itself
becomes an intermediary uh for then your
headphones
or whatever uh other speakers that
you're using to listen to
the actual the high end and the
mid-ranges because what they're covering
here
is that low end and so it's this kind of
tethered effect where you have music
streaming on your phone or playing
locally on whatever device you have
bluetooth then to the shoe and then that
gets connected
to some headphones and you can also
compensate for
latency for bluetooth latency so you're
matching up the responses between the
shoe
and the headphones as well ergonomically
you know i think they also accomplish
for the most part a really comfortable
shoe it's really easy to slip on
you know even though there is a lot of
stuff on the bottom here
there's enough padding here we're
walking around my house
and my backyard it feels comfortable um
right now we're not really going outside
so i've been taking this running
but this for me feels more like an
indoor shoe something that i would wear
instead of slippers around the house
and i kind of want to keep the bottom
clean as well
it is uh also heavier than your typical
sneaker
quite a bit it's actually one pound
eight ounces or so per shoe
and so by comparison um um
one blendstone for example um is
basically
almost a pound about 15 ounces and so
this is about
eight or nine ounces over that and um
that's not that big of a problem you
know what i don't feel like i'm dragging
my feet around
and for the most part i am using this
while sitting at my desk
or on the couch uh listening to music
or watching movies and that's the
primary
experience that they're selling this for
so uh that's why first testing was
listening to a bunch of music you know
could i be
working and being productive on my
computer while i
have my headphones on and then also
having these shoes on
what would that experience be like and i
really enjoyed that you know listening
to music
you want to appreciate the full range of
the sound experience i have my own
favorite headphones i use
uh my noise canceling sony xm3s pairing
that
with this shoe great experience for
completely
wireless my phone in my pocket could be
walking around my office
doing all sorts of stuff and really
feel you know a more full body
audio experience now it's not going to
be the same
as going to a concert i'm not going to
feel
the vibrations in my chest but i do feel
them in my feet and that is something
that i
didn't know i wanted at home listening
to music
while on headphones uh sitting at my
computer here
uh my favorite pair of headphones are um
they're planar magnetic headphones and
so while they're
really wonderful for the high ends and
clarity they actually have very low bass
response and so pairing that
with um you know the tactile transducers
the low end that's
brought in by these shoes actually made
that a really nice complimentary
experience um
movies also something that i didn't
expect to enjoy or didn't know what to
expect and i found myself
really really enjoying it as well
obviously certain types of movies work a
lot better
so something like 1917 or bumblebee
movies that you're going to want to have
a great bass experience a lot of that
sound design is does
emphasize uh the low end when you're
watching a movie in theaters
you're getting a lot more of that here
and it's not the same of course as going
to
dolby cinema or even with a really nice
speaker setup in your living room
but it's it's so hard to explain because
i am feeling more immersed in the movie
and it does feel like something that you
know an
hour into the movie i'm not noticing i'm
just enjoying the experience
and after watching a couple movies and
spending a couple days
using this uh with music and then
not using it it is something i feel like
i'm missing it's totally one of those
pieces of technology
that you know i didn't know i wanted and
it's not like i can't live without it
but i do want to go back to it it's not
something that's been sitting in a
drawer
sitting in the corner of my office i am
actually actively
using it um and you can use it for
quite a while uh the battery here lasts
for about
six hours and that's gonna depend on how
powerful
you adjust the uh the feedback to be the
tactile feedback to be
um and on the strongest setting it does
reduce quite a bit
uh three to four hours so i do have
these kind of plugged
in uh via these magnetic chargers on
both left and right shoe
into the wall on a maybe uh every other
day
basis now in terms of what
that haptic feedback feels like
this is in the realm of haptics it's not
force feedback so i'm not getting
active resistance uh from the shoe
physics
just won't allow that right they had to
design this where they're sending
vibrations up uh as well as
um you know accommodating for different
kind of feet sizes where your arch is
and so it essentially it is a compact
subwoofer
that they designed to put in here and
you're getting uh
vibrations and it is a localized
experience you know where you can see
this red circle that is
under the arch of your foot where you
feel
uh vibrations now of course the
amplitude can change
and you feel you know there's a
difference between a low vibration and a
stronger thump um but it's not you know
the kind of very precise uh linear
resonant actuators that you get
on something you know like the old like
vr steam controllers
or even on something like uh your apple
watch or
the kind of hd haptics you feel on the
nintendo switch controllers
that's not that type of technology here
and part of that is because
it's using essentially uh digital sound
processing
on any type of sound input you know
it's an analog input essentially that
they're taking in
digital over bluetooth but it's looking
at that waveform
it's doing some analysis on that
essentially processing it
doing a low pass filter on it
adjusting the frequencies and then
turning that low end
into their base response and in the app
you can
configure uh different filter settings
and so they have you know
recommendations for songs that are
more lush or songs that are
more on the high end and so this is
their equivalent of allowing you on a
preamp to adjust the frequency
for the low pass and the high cut
which for other tactile transducers
we've tested have been
a separate configurable unit that's
something i wish
they had here as a way to actually tune
the filters the the presets here i do
notice a difference between them but i
would love a little more granularity
in uh tuning the feedback for my
enjoyment now if you set to the maximum
feedback that's actually what they
recommend for games and that's another
uh place where this was a really
interesting experience so
console games you can also connect this
to
the audio output of a gamepad so they
include
this cable which is an analog cable
and it's a splitter essentially there's
a separate splitter that you plug this
into
and so from your xbox gamepad or your
ps4
you would then have an output to your
headphones
and then or if you don't want you can
just go use your speakers
uh and then you plug this in and it
actually
plugs into via the same charging port
the shoe as well and there are some
games where
having this again it just increased a
level
of immersion in a way that i never knew
i wanted so
one of the games i played this with was
red dead redemption 2
and riding a horse galloping
through a field the thump and the
landing of the hooves
that's something that i felt in the shoe
uh an interesting really interesting
experience was wading
through like a creek or a river and
uh filtering through that audio that's
not something you think of as having a
lot of low end and bass response
but there's some part of that audio mix
that then gets transferred to the shoe
and you feel a little bit of a tingling
sensation as i'm walking through
that river or that creek now this isn't
supposed to be
a direct one-to-one representation of
what it would feel like to
ride a horse or wade through river and
you know
haptics abstracts a lot of the signal
here it's essentially it's a dumb signal
it's just taking
sound and processing sound uh into
a sensation but it's a cue right it's an
audio cue
that lets me connect what i'm seeing
visually to
some type of physiological experience
which enhances the immersion and it was
something that was really fascinating
for video games
now because of the covid lockdown most
of my testing of this so far
has been indoors at home i've done a
little bit of walking outside in the
street in my backyard like i said
um and i really don't know if this is
something
that needs to be taken outdoor or
something you would necessarily ride
on the bus or the subway or even go
running with
certainly if you're going to go running
and you're going to have your foot
impact
on the shoe as well and like
counteractive
to the sensations that it's trying to
give you
and even if you're just sitting on the
subway or something or a bus and wearing
this there is
a little bit of sound pollution as much
of
as they design this to send the
uh the feedback and the
kind of haptic feedback upwards toward
your foot
physics doesn't work that way and you
can
hear it if you're standing on a hardwood
floor or someone and
you're wearing it someone next to you or
in your proximity they'll be able to
hear it i mean
um my housemates told me that i s it
sounded like
uh you know the kind of effect that you
would hear if your neighbors had their
their subwoofers blasting pretty loud
and that's what it felt like when i was
in the same room with them
and there is definitely also more travel
between
floors too if you're on a second floor
and someone's underneath
they're going to actually hear that
below the floor depending on how your
house is built and so i've been using it
really
in indoors in my office and like i said
wearing it more like
a uh slipper indoor slipper than
an outdoor sports shoe the next place of
course
logically for me was to test this in a
virtual reality
setup so once again uh for example for
on something like the oculus quest you
would have to split the audio
so you take the audio output um and you
then you know thankfully on the quest
there's actually two audio outputs so
you don't need to split that
um and you connect that cable uh here
and then
the other end goes to the shoe and this
is one of the places where i also wish
the cable
was longer it's at 58 inches under 5
feet
so from where the headset is to your
feet uh it's a little bit constrictive i
had to use an extender
cable 3.5 millimeter extender to get it
comfortable and you know use little
clips of course so i'm not tangling
myselves myself up while playing
but games like beat saber and especially
pistol whip work really really well with
this
shoe and i could see you know again
developers don't need to specifically
program
or audio mix for this shoe but i could
see games where
uh if you're using a teleport locomotion
technique where you're you know like in
half-life alex and you're
warping from place to place giving some
type
of audio cue so you can feel the
quote-unquote
steps that you would have made through
that teleport or even with smooth
locomotion as i'm
you know floating around and drifting
through the play area just using
thumbsticks in vr i want to maybe
feel what it's like to have those
footsteps again it's not resistive
feedback
but it's an audio cue and hear a sensory
cue
that could let me know what i'm doing in
that game and make it feel a little less
floaty to be honest um that's something
i would love to see
vr developers take advantage of and i
want to see maybe chat with more games
to see if i can actually
get that in the current sound mixes for
this shoe another reason i want that
more granular control
in the application i also would love for
it to be wireless and i think they said
they are working on some type of
wireless dongle solution so you can
audio output
and then some type of connection to the
shoes you're not wirely tethered
but then they would have to solve
latency issues and vr
latency is a huge concern um
disconnect between what you see and what
you hear and what you
feel and so that direct connection is
the most ideal
right now i also have another seated
setup so
here the length of cable isn't a big
issue in
a vr cockpit simulator that i'm building
and playing simulators like a space game
space sam elite dangerous
or even uh a game a racing game
having the shoe again increases
the sensation of being in that game so
um whether it's elite dangerous where
i'm in a spaceship
and i want to feel the engines humming
when i increase the throttle
yes i have my butt kicker transducer on
the chair
and i'm feeling the rumble on the seat
but i'm not
feeling in my foot unless i'm putting
these shoes on and
having that more complete full body
vibration
and haptic feedback increases the
immersion
a ton it's something that i really
really enjoy using
in a vr simulator and in a racing game
it's one of those cases again if you're
driving your car
you don't feel vibrational feedback on
your foot
with the pedals right you feel you know
when you drive over gravel or driving
over
any type of speed bump if that's actual
um that's that's resistive feedback
right and short of having a
full motion simulator that's going to
give you and
kind of move your body around this
becomes more again
like an audio cue but it's believable it
doesn't have to be realistic
uh it actually enhances the inversion
still in the same way that having the
bass shaker tap into
my audio uh from a video game from a
racing game
in vr enhances that level of immersion
here again it's a more full-body
experience so
really fascinating use cases for this
not something that i would have thought
i needed but
definitely something i am happy to be
living with in my day-to-day enjoyment
of music
movies and vr there's a lot i could see
them doing and going with this
technology
in terms of maybe maybe more speakers in
here i
want more uh granularity
in the types of feedback right now it's
localized that one
spot and i could also see
a lot of businesses and industries maybe
in
the accessibility world tap into
what it means to have tactile feedback
in applications outside of entertainment
you know
we all got our watches our smart watches
with
haptic feedback we started using them to
for cues like navigation
right one tap to turn left two taps turn
right
signals coming up like how could that be
integrated with an app on your phone
bluetooth tethered to a shoe to enhance
the type of
extra sensory information that you would
have this metadata layer
over the real world as we move into
augmented reality technologies and mixed
reality technologies haptics are going
to be
a big part of that um this does feel
very much
like a first generation product and
that's why it's
for early adopters right this is not
cheap it's 300
right now uh but the best thing i can
say about it
is it's not something that sits
in the closet it's not something that
sits in a drawer it is something i'm
actively using
on a regular basis and it's something
it's one of those delightful pieces of
technology that i
didn't know i wanted and i certainly
don't need but i now definitely
want to be part of my office and home
entertainment
experience so uh it's if there's an
opportunity once we get back into the
world for you to try this out i would
encourage you to do so
um and these are the drop labs
episode ones uh hope you found it
interesting
at least as a digest into haptics
and uh kind of what haptics can bring
to home entertainment and vr and we'll
have more coverage of interesting tech
like this
in the future thank you so much for
watching i'm norm
and i'll see you next time bye
