Headphones & Headsets

SAR at IFA

By Joe Murray / September 14, 2023
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IFA 2023 unveiled many interesting new products and even some surprising trends. SAR was there to ensure we got all the inside knowledge. Our first takeaway from the Berlin-based electronics show was the drive to XR. At SAR we have been anticipating the rise in these products for a few years now, however, IFA was […]

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Exotic New Silicon-Based Speakers Are Coming to Next-Generation Earbuds

By Peter Cooney / August 15, 2023
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MEMS speakers design wins are starting to accelerate, and the technology is being recognised by more media outlets. Recently I was invited to help WSJ journalist Christopher Mims with an article discussing the market, highlighting two vendors xMEMS and uSound. Here are some of the quotes from me, for more details please view the full article […]

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Wires vs Lossless Codecs

By Joe Murray / August 1, 2023
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​Apple has just released the latest product from their subsidiary, Beats. The new Beats Studio Pro’s, which retail for $349.99, ironically still comes with wired connections. Despite Apple being the company that inspired many others to drop any connection holes from smartphones in the first place. This has been done to allow users to stream […]

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TikTok beta tests premium only streaming service

By Kian Rayment / July 20, 2023
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​​​TikTok is attempting to penetrate the already saturated digital music streaming market. The news recently comes as an expansion to beta testing offered in Brazil and Indonesia. According to the news, “TikTok says it’s inviting users in Australia, Mexico and Singapore to participate in the TikTok Music closed beta test starting today.”This is very significant as […]

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Shokz enter the TWS market

By Joe Murray / July 4, 2023
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Shokz has just announced its first TWS products with a twist. In a similar vein to how they have attempted to offer a safer solution to earbuds in the past without using audio transparency, their new earbuds offer what they are calling Air Conduction, which seems to be either Beamforming or something very similar. The […]

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Qualcomm S3 Gen 2 Sound Platform Portfolio

By Peter Cooney / July 4, 2023
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​​Qualcomm has announced an update to the Qualcomm S3 Gen 2 Sound platform portfolio, which is optimised for gaming. Latency is perhaps the biggest issue that is holding back widespread adoption of Bluetooth for gaming, many vendors continue to rely on proprietary RF to ensure latency is minimised. SAR Insight has talked about this many times. […]

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Windows 11 Adds Bluetooth LE Audio Support

By Peter Cooney / May 25, 2023
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This announcement demonstrates that Bluetooth LE Audio is soon to become mainstream. It’s addition to the Windows 11 will bring this to a very wide audience and allow new Bluetooth LE Audio enabled peripheral devices, such as TWS earbuds, to connect to millions of Windows PCs. SAR expects the number of Bluetooth LE Audio enabled […]

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Unity claim first lossless wireless headphones

By Joe Murray / May 25, 2023
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Swiss headphone company, Unity, has just released a pair of what they are calling the worlds first wireless lossless headphones. The headphones use a proprietary technology called Full-Fidelity that allows the headphones to receive audio which takes advantages of both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth to capture audio quality at 24-bit/96kHz. Many would argue that consumer headphones […]

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Head Acoustics offers LE Audio testing environment

By Joe Murray / May 24, 2023
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​Head Acoustics has updated its solutions to support testing of the new Bluetooth LE Audio protocol. LE Audio, while it was announced in January 2020, it is only just come to market in the past year or so. One issue for companies adopting this technology into their portfolio of headphones is the risk of negative […]

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Panasonic Avionics to partner with HEAR360 to bring Spatial Audio to the air

By Kian Rayment / May 10, 2023
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There is a lot of buzz in audio markets about ‘spatial audio’ at the moment and many companies are opting to benefit from the boost in interest by offering some iteration of the concept. If you’re not familiar, the biggest player within this market is Dolby Atmos, others include  Sony 360 Reality Audio which is based […]

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