Award Recipients

UK technology company, Flare Audio, has been honoured with a King’s Award for Enterprise, focusing on its unique breakthrough product, Calmer – a clever in-ear device that takes the edge off triggering sounds, helping wearers feel calmer and less stressed.

Dedicated to designing and manufacturing innovative audio products, the multi-award-winning business has developed a number of technologies to help improve people’s experiences with sound. Flare’s Calmer reduces stress from annoying and uncomfortable noises without blocking sound, avoiding the isolation caused by earplugs. Calmer alters the ear’s internal geometry to soften high-frequency sounds, providing relief for everything from travel noise (including reducing the impact from sirens, tube screeching and tannoy announcements), busy places, eating sounds and family hecticness, to providing often life-changing benefits for those with sound sensitivities, including those associated with autism or ADHD.

Its latest addition to the range, Calmer Performance, also helps to increase focus, reduce distractions and minimise stress; proving popular for busy office workers and commuters.

Employing just 20 people, Flare was founded in 2007 by husband and wife team Davies and Naomi Roberts, and has gained support from big name artists and producers for its high-clarity earphone technology. The company’s success has seen it rack up over four million followers on social media, ship to 186 countries, and count names including broadcaster and music lover Stephen Fry, producer Tony Visconti, and BBC DJ Chris Hawkins as supporters of the brand.

“I can’t express how humbled I am that one of my inventions has been recognised by the King,” says Flare’s Product Inventor and Co-Founder, Davies Roberts. “When Naomi and I founded Flare we had a clear mission to develop meaningful sound technologies. We started by redesigning loudspeakers and had no idea that our constant innovation and R&D would lead us to creating products that help calm our response to stressful noises. I am so honoured for Flare to receive this award. Being recognised for an invention that is making a difference in the world is what every inventor dreams of.”