The development prospect and current situation of over-head headphone

The evolution of Bluetooth technology

Bluetooth technology was another major turning point in the development of earphones. With this innovation, earphones can be used without cables, and the foundation for true wireless earphones is laid.

Ericsson introduced Bluetooth technology in 1994, and its primary purpose is to eliminate serial data lines. Bluetooth became official in 1997. Bluetooth technology replaces wired input methods, so headsets must integrate internal circuitry and provide a long battery life. Thanks to their large volume, headphones have become the main carrying object.

With the development of Bluetooth technology, the basic problems of Bluetooth power consumption, transmission rate, delay, connection stability, and other basic issues have been continuously addressed. Bluetooth headset products have improved greatly in performance, and the advantages have gradually displaced the disadvantages, and they have gradually replaced wired headsets.

A new generation of Bluetooth audio technology standard, LE Audio, was launched by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (Bluetooth SIG) in 2020. LC3 is a new high-quality, low-power audio decoder based on Bluetooth 5.2; it can support multiple streaming audio and broadcast audio protocols, and it supports hearing aids as well. In addition, this opens up a lot of interesting directions for future headphones.

Wear detection function

TWS earphones have rapidly gained popularity for their in-ear detection feature. Optical sensors are used to realize the automatic pause/wear automatic play function, which improves the user experience and reduces power consumption when not in use.

Wearing detection is the use of the Bluetooth headset's in-ear detection function. The dismantling of the audio network revealed that the wearing detection function is currently implemented in three ways. There are optical sensors represented by the Sony WH-1000XM4, capacitive sensors represented by Huawei FreeBuds Studio, and photoelectric sensors.

The latest generation of Sony's noise-canceling Bluetooth headset WH-1000XM4 employs a wearing detection function for the first time. The optical sensor is positioned in the ear cup by creating a larger opening. Directly opening holes inside the earmuffs to reduce the influence of dust-proof mesh on the optical sensor achieves the wearing detection function while sacrificing a certain amount of integrity and beauty in the product appearance.

On October 22, Huawei launched its FreeBuds Studio Bluetooth headset at the Huawei Mate40 series global conference. As Huawei's first product, it has a lot of design and functional features. With a capacitive solution, the wearing detection function delivers a more accurate detection effect, and it is equipped with a large-area capacitive sensing area.

Another photoelectric sensor that I love is that I found a sensor group that can realize the function of wearing detection without having to open the headphone when dismantling a mysterious headphone. Infrared laser high-speed decoding detection chip and infrared laser coding drive emission chip combine to provide accurate wearing detection.

Noise cancellation with active noise cancellation

Active noise reduction is a feature that has become increasingly popular in headphones over the past two years, enhancing the experience of using headphones. The history of noise-cancelling headphones shows that pilots have been using them since the 1980s and 1990s, and that commercial noise-cancelling headphones began to appear after 2000.

The noise-cancelling headphone market will explode in 2020, as audio manufacturers lay out their plans.

Active noise cancellation is one of the most important technologies in modern headphones. It mainly collects the sound of the external environment and the internal ear canal through multiple microphones, and is equipped with a built-in noise reduction chip to automatically detect noise. Remove the original noise, so as to achieve the purpose of noise reduction.