Headphones

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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Knowles Balanced Armatures Pack High-Fidelity Punch into 21-Driver UE PREMIER IEM

By Peter Cooney / June 27, 2023
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Ultimate Ears’ recent UE Premier in-ear monitor (IEM) headphones boast an impressive 21 drivers per earpiece, “to deliver a signature sound with unparalleled fidelity, control and precision”. It is the trend to add more and more drivers (speakers) to IEM earbuds, but SAR has not seen anything quite so dramatic as 21 per earbud before. On closer inspection […]

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Apple Vision Pro

By Joe Murray / June 22, 2023
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​As expected, Apple has just announced their first entry into the Extended Reality market. The Apple Vision Pro. Set to release in early 2024 and selling at a base price of $3,499, the new device will spark new life into the mixed reality market. Currently, the only large-scale device that uses mixed reality (a combination […]

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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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JLab’s Work Buds

By Joe Murray / May 10, 2023
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As expected, TWS earbuds entry into the Enterprise world is in full swing.  JLab’s new workbuds are now available to order. The new earbuds, retailing for $79.99, come with a detachable boom for use as either a consumer device for listening to music, or as a call ready headset. One glaring issue that SAR sees with […]

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Wired Earbuds Are Cool Again

By Kian Rayment / May 10, 2023
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Wired earbuds were becoming a thing of the past – until now? There is still growth in the TWS market, which is why sometimes the prospect of wired earbuds goes amiss. However, the concept does make complete sense if you think about it. The Magnesium V3 Entry level IEMs piqued my interest this week. Ear […]

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xMEMS brings speakers plus programmable vent to production

By Peter Cooney / April 20, 2023
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​The SAR audio team visited xMEMS during our recent short tour of the Bay Area. During this time we were treated to a demo from the xMEMS team of its most recent products. SAR has been covering MEMS speakers for a few years now and are well versed on xMEMS products and their competitors (see MEMS […]

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