Articles

ANC Development Process

The process for developing an ANC headset is broadly similar to any product development. At the top level we must go through the phases of Ideation, Market and Business validation, Product Development and Commercialization. It is the product development stage where a few idiosyncrasies and details need to be recognized and addressed to ensure a…
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Earphone Design Concepts

In-ear earphones are so small that there ends up being limited scope for a designer to do something that really differentiates a product. Here we take a look at a couple of design concepts with one in particular that tried to break from the norm.

ANC Simulation vs Measured

In ANC product development modelling and simulation tools tools are an essential part of the process. The use of simulation tools allows the designer to predict the ANC performance as well as understand key characteristics such as phase and gain margin. The question is however, how well does the simulation data match the actual results…
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Headphone Earpad Selection

Earpads tend to be one of the most misunderstood components of a headphone design. The earpad obviously affects comfort and styling but is often not recognised as a key contributor to audio performance. In fact earpads have a massive influence on the audio character of a headphone. A poorly performing headphone can be completely transformed…
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ANC Digital vs Analogue

In active noise cancellation there is often debate over whether digital or analogue systems provide better performance. Lets examine the differences and similarities and see how they might affect the noise cancellation performance The principle of noise cancellation is based on the observation that overlapping sound waves add together. So if we have a noise…
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The FFT Cheat Sheet

The FFT is a technique to determine the frequency content of a signal. FFT is an acronym for Fast Fourier Transform, where the “fast” bit simply means it is a fancy algorithm for calculating the Fourier transform, which is ultimately the calculation that takes a waveform and outputs the frequency content of the that waveform.…
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Passive Radiator vs Port Tube

Passive radiators have become increasingly popular in small portable speakers. So lets examine why that might be the case and what are the pros and cons of a passive radiator compared to a port tube. Both a port tube and a passive radiator serve the same purpose. That is to extent the low frequency response…
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Headphone Articulation

The articulation of a headphone refers to the movement that allows a headphone to adjust its geometry to fit comfortably on the head. We usually find some height adjustment , rotation about a vertical axis and rotation about a horizontal axis. We are always researching ways to improve the articulation mechanisms. There are however inherent…
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