Technology
The use of MEMS speakers in TWS devices came another step closer with the announcement that xMEMS has teamed up with Korean speaker vendor Bujeon Electronics. The BEM-1xx and BEM-2xx family of speaker modules will uses a hybrid approach with a MEMS speaker as the tweeter and dynamic speaker as the woofer. It also uses […]
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In a previous post Hear This: ‘Ear-Worn Computing’ Around the Corner, I talked about the next generation of headphones (Headphone 3.0) and how this is likely to impact the market over the next few years. At CES 2023 this vision of the future became a little closer to reality, with several companies demonstrating technology that […]
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This is an interesting development in TWS sensors, it shows a continuing trend towards sensor integration, primarily to reduce cost but also improve such things as waterproofing. This particular sensor from Azoteq boast touch, wear, docking and force sensing in one component, which usually requires 3 or 4 separate sensors. SAR Insight’s TWS database shows […]
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Although it may not be clearly visible to the car users, Cerence owns a large market share of embedded automotive voice assistants, with many automotive OEMs as customers. When it comes to voice assistants in automotive, there are two implementations – one is cloud-based and the other is embedded. While cloud-based voice assistant systems are […]
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SAR had an opinion piece published in EE Times this week, full details here. The article discusses the future of headphones, considering what is next on the horizon, what we and others in the industry are calling Headphone 3.0. Essentially, we are expected next gen headphones to evolve evermore into ear-worn computers rather than audio […]
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Nordic semiconductor is a well-known company in Bluetooth technology and their Bluetooth chips are widely used in many consumer devices such as voice remote, smart watch and smart speaker, etc. Nordic’s nRF5340 is an attractive Bluetooth SoC although it is missing the backend audio part so the implementation requires an external audio CODEC for a […]
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It looks like Bluetooth LE (BLE) audio is making a significant impact on TWS SoC providers such as Airoha, as it is believed to be a game changer in the wireless audio industry. TWS SoC providers consider BLE as an important milestone due to the benefits that it will bring. Power efficiency and better sound […]
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In a recent TWS market study, SAR finds that the use of RISC-V cores is increasing. The RISC-V is license free core although one has sole responsibility to make the core run without any technical issues. Fabless TWS SoC companies such as mid-to-low tier IC companies may find RISC-V cores appealing due to the cost […]
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Netflix recently announced the availability of spatial audio to all devices, but this feature does not require a surround speaker system as it is through a two channel audio configuration. Since it is two channel audio based, the availability of spatial audio will be rather wider unlike Dolby ATMOS also available in some of the […]
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As discussed in SAR’s study on MEMS speakers, automotive is one of the largest markets for speakers, with almost ½ billion speakers used per year. SAR is expecting MEMS speakers to start being used in automotive applications from 2023, in small volumes as OEMs trial their usage. MEMS speakers could enable OEM designers to try […]
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