The pitch on Doppler Labs' Here Active Listening is pretty simple: what if you could customize your listening experience — of the entire world? This seemed especially appealing at Coachella, where I was surrounded by 90,000 people. Wouldn't it be nice to sit on the lawn, tune out the conversation, and tune in the main stage act?

The demo focuses on gimmicks. For instance: you can put a "hallway" or "echo" effect on what you hear. I am asked if this is cool. I guess it’s a nifty technological trick, that you can add effects to voices, but… why would I? These settings feel like things that were added because the engineers knew how to produce them, not because they were meant to be seriously used. I thought the point was making my own individual sound mix for Coachella, not adding echo effects to speaker’s voices, you know? This is kind of like getting a demo for a camera, but one where only the sepia filter works.

What I really am looking for is a way of dealing with the bass pouring out of the Sahara tent. I am about to go see DJ Mustard, and I know the bass is going to be way too much for me. A lot of modern sound mixes prioritize bass in a way I don’t like, particularly since the mid-bass is sometimes boosted inappropriately high. This is actually pretty normal: most headphones boost bass because most people prefer a slightly higher bass mix to a "flat" one. I don’t really listen to bass-boosted music, and I buy headphones and speakers accordingly, so the most-popular sound mix isn’t going to be the one made for my tastes. Here promises that I can, using the app, tinker with specific frequencies, to tailor the mix to my preferences.

In the Rose Garden, I run into Doppler Labs’ CEO and co-founder Noah Kraft. I do have some questions for him. For instance, the wind has kicked up and it’s messing with the earbuds and making the general listening experience extremely unpleasant. Is there a wind filter? There is not. I consider asking him about the effects, and who would ever want or use them, but before I can get there he asks me if anyone has shown me the effects. He is very proud of them and is prepared to demo them himself. I quickly interrupt and say I have to be going — DJ set!

DJ Mustard’s set was not, like, overwhelmingly new or original. Did you know that lots of people like "Hotline Bling" and Fetty Wap? What’s fun about it, though, is that the crowd is having the best time, like, ever, man. What’s less fun is that though Doppler Labs had optimized its app for the festival, there was still the occasionally fzzzt noise of a speaker coming in and out. I consider opening the app on my phone to tinker, but in the crush of people this proves to be impossible. I do the next-best thing: I take the earbuds out and replace them with my cheapo earplugs.

But perhaps I could make better use of Here as a reporting tool. After DJ Mustard, I head off to make notes on what I've seen and heard so far. As I'm walking across the lawn, I note the fashion. Most of the men are dressed in a super-boring way, but one guy is wearing a thong, and his ass cheeks are visible to all the world. (I hope he used sunscreen!) Women, who appear to have gotten some memo I missed regarding rhinestones above the eyebrows, pose for selfies in their crocheted flowing dresses. I hear snippets of conversation — which band to see, who's wearing what, what looks good on Instagram. It occurs to me that the idea of personalized listening kind of flows against what a festival is about, which is being part of a group, observing other people, listening to their conversations, maybe learning something.

I'm hungry, and so I head over to get ramen — that’s back in the Rose Garden, on the other side of the festival. Halfway over, I stop by Do Lab, which is like a little haven of Burning Man in the middle of Coachella. (What I mean to say is that it smells like feet inside the tent.) I don’t recognize the music or the artist. I’m not really sure how it should sound. I do have the bass dialed down, but this doesn’t ameliorate the thudding I feel directly in my chest. Weird; I can feel the vibrations but don’t hear them. This is probably the first time I experience the earbuds working the way I want them to. After a few songs, I duck out again, one mission on my mind: ramen.

This absurd little scene isn't much to write home about — admittedly — but it charmed me all the same. I'd have missed it if the Here earbuds were in, since they’re not very good at picking up nearby chatter, especially in the wind. I’m not totally sure what the algorithms are optimizing for, but my brain is better at it, whatever it is.

After dinner, I make my way over to the Savages set. Jehnny Beth is strutting like an angry peacock onstage. The earbuds are not keeping up — I think they’re losing their charge. I pull them out, which is when I hear the middle-aged woman next to me rocking out to "Husbands." She knows all the words, and she is feeling them.

All these girls in crocheted dresses, the man who was gracing us with a full moon — they came here to see and be seen. Part of the fun of events like this, whether it’s Coachella or the Iowa State Fair, is the spectacle. You want to see and hear the ridiculous people around you because they make for good stories; they’re part of the reason you came. Asking for my own separate audio system felt like missing out on the spectacle. The problem with an individualized listening experience is that it leaves you all alone. But if you wanted to be all alone, why did you come to the festival in the first place?