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Industry & Product News
Knowles Offers AI-Enabled True Wireless Development Kit with Advanced Features
Knowles announced the availability of a new AI-enabled True Wireless Stereo (TWS) Development Platform that will certainly be welcomed by developers and manufacturers globally, looking to accelerate the product development process, from entry-level to premium applications. The new TWS development kit shortens the design cycle for OEMs, enabling advanced, differentiated products with contributed technologies from Alango Technologies and Chatable.ai, among others. Read More
Dirac Equips Philips' First-Ever Gaming Headset with High-Quality Immersive Sound
Swedish digital audio pioneer Dirac and MMD Monitors & Displays, the leading display specialist and brand license partner for Philips’ monitors and IT accessories, have teamed up to equip Philips’ first-ever gaming headset with Dirac’s spatial audio solution. Dirac delivers a virtualized 3D, 7.1 surround sound experience through the two-channel headset to put users at the center of the action. The Philips TAGH401BL gaming headset marks the first collaboration between the two companies. Read More
Austrian Audio Releases Hi-X15 and Hi-X25BT High Excursion Headphones
Austrian Audio continues to expand on its heritage and expertise with new headphones for prosumer applications. The new headphones are the more affordable models in the company's Hi-X series, capitalizing on the listening experience of High Excursion driver technology for everyday use. The new Hi-X15 closed-back headphones, and wireless Hi-X25BT can be used at the studio or anywhere, and are positioned to project the brand even further. Read More
SquadCast Cloud Recording Studio Service Now Offers Dolby.io Audio Processing
Cloud recording studio (CRS) platform SquadCast announced an update (v4.5) to its service, which includes Dolby.io noise cancellation, one-click audio mastering, a new category-first integration API, and new workflow features among other enhancements. SquadCast’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) subscription enables users to connect and record up to 10 people simultaneously in a recording session — an increase over the previous maximum of four participants. Read More
Audeze and SMRT Image Announce CRBN Electrostatic Headphones for Medical and Neuroscience Applications
Over the years Audeze has developed planar magnetic headphones that are highly praised by musicians, sound engineers, and audio/music enthusiasts for their high quality. The company, whose R&D and manufacturing center is based in Orange County, CA, is now launching a new series of electrostatic headphones using a new transducer technology called CRBN, which Audeze believes will help improve patient comfort and support neuroscience research. Read More
JBL Reimagines Home Audio with New L75ms Music System and L52 Classic Bookshelf Loudspeakers
ProSource, the US audio, video, and integration buying group, announced at its ProSource Summer Conference that JBL is once again pushing reimagined home audio classics. JBL introduced its L75ms Music System, a modern reimagining of the traditional hi-fi system, now with wired and wireless connectivity, a classic walnut wood veneer cabinet finish, and a black Quadrex foam grille. Also new is the JBL L52 Classic bookshelf loudspeaker, available with Quadrex foam grilles in a choice of black, blue, or orange. Read More
Klipsch AI-Powered True Wireless ANC Earbuds with Bragi OS and Dirac Sound Optimization Now Available
Klipsch confirmed that its new true wireless earbuds with best-in-class Active Noise Cancellation (ANC) technology and built-in artificial intelligence are now available! The Klipsch T5 II True Wireless ANC earphones are the result of an extended collaboration between the consumer audio brand (a VOXX International company), Dirac's digital audio processing experts, and Bragi, pioneers in hearables and the creators of the Bragi Software Suite with embedded AI. Read More
Questyle Introduces M12 Mobile Hi-Fi Headphone Amplifier with ESS Sabre DAC
Questyle Technology, the renowned manufacturer of high-quality DACs, headphone amplifiers, and Current Mode Amplification systems, has now announced its new M12 Mobile Hi-Fi Headphone Amplifier with DAC. With the compact M12 USB-C DAC, the company allows mobile phone listeners to enjoy the best of lossless and high-resolution audio streaming platforms, using the ESS Sabre 32 ES9281AC flagship digital-to-analog converter (DAC). Read More
Guest Editorial
Ciaran Maloy
(Audio Machine Learning Engineer at TagMix)
Capture the Moment on Your Smartphone
Get the House Mix Soundtrack
It's something you see at every live music event, people holding their phone above their heads to record the sights and sounds of the gig in progress. Often people are capturing video and almost completely indecipherable audio on a device that just wasn’t designed for this kind of recording - a fact they will only discover when they choose to rewatch the video later. And usually... only once before deleting.

While the video portion of a recording might be acceptable quality - depending on where you’re standing and what is happening with the lighting - any audio recorded on your phone from a concert is going to be terrible. Cameras on devices have emerged as a key selling point for phones in the last decades, with huge amounts of time and research put into making them smaller and better, year after year. However, both speakers and microphones on phones have received nowhere near as much attention. But this isn’t just due to lack of interest, it's due to fundamental design limitations that are much harder to work around.

The difference between light and sound is specifically that the miniaturization of photography is much easier considering the tiny wavelengths of light itself. Sound wavelengths in the lower hertz range on the other hand can extend over meters, and so creating an input that can capture them and be extremely small is an enormous challenge
Users want to capture and share the moment! But the smartphone microphones are not up to the task (and never will be).
Most smartphones currently use microelectricalmechanical systems (MEMS) microphones, which are small. Sound is captured by two charged silicon membranes, one of which vibrates in response to pressure waves, and these vibrations are then converted into an electronic response. Though high-quality MEMS microphones are available, the ones on mobile phones tend to only have their frequency range defined within 100Hz and 10kHz, with a resonant peak between 4kHz and 6kHz - ideal for capturing the human voice, and easily mass produced, but not ideal for high-quality musical recordings.

Live music on stage is most likely to be captured using professional dynamic mics, designed to have a directional polar pattern and each microphone made to capture an optimal frequency range for its specific purpose: low-frequency mics for a kick drum and bass (e.g., AKG D112), and an SM57 for guitars or snares. A range of different mics are mixed by an engineer to produce the sound that we all hear at a gig. Compare this to the mass-produced smartphone mic previously described, and you see the problem.

The wall we’ve hit in terms of what mass-produced mics can record is as much about their purpose as it is about physical or design limitations. Simply put, phones are not designed to record anything more than a person’s voice. It can be easy to forget with all the features that have been added over the years, but phones are still... phones. Designed to make calls. To send and receive verbal communications. Why would anyone want to enhance the recording and playback qualities of a phone beyond what they can do currently?
Tagmix enhances the quality of the videos users create at concerts, clubs, and festivals by giving them a professional soundtrack.
A big reason is the huge rise in user generated content (UGC), which brands, artists, and organizations of all kinds have been quick to harness as part of their marketing strategies - through both influencers and by turning their fans into brand ambassadors. While images and videos have always been center stage in influencer culture, when it comes to live music and live events in particular sound is just as, if not more, important. The low quality content created by fans and influencers from live events is largely down to limitations in readily available audio technology. If you want an example of just how effective the right mix of audio and video can be in UGC, look no further than TikTok.

Moving past the limitations of the most commonly available microphones, anyone with even a passing audio understanding will tell you that no recording done from the middle of a crowd is going to turn out well. There is a reason that artists record their songs in specially designed studios. Sound is limited to exactly where you are in physical dimensions. In the context of a live event you are not in the ideal position to be recording anything. Sounds will be coming at you from every direction, at high volume, and reverberating around the space blending with the roar of the crowd - so it’s not going to work. Even the best microphone in the world won’t overcome those environmental factors, and this doesn’t even touch on the issue of distortion in very loud environments.

The biggest problem here is blind source separation. If you are talking to someone or listening to music in a crowded room, you are able to focus in on that sound while filtering out other noise in order to hear it better. This is a neat feature of the human brain that we call “cocktail party effect” - the brain's ability to focus your auditory attention on a particular stimulus - that unfortunately isn’t shared by audio technology.

With microphones being unable to “focus” on a specific set of sounds in the same way that we can, it absorbs all sound almost equally. In a loud environment with dozens or even hundreds of different sources of sound, microphones simply can’t differentiate between what we want to hear and what we don’t.
It does this by automatically replacing the audio captured by the user's phone with music coming directly from the mixing desk of that same event.
When it comes to images and videos, there are no end of apps or software options that will allow you to touch up your content to a professional level. So where is "Photoshop for audio"? Audio spectra from dirty audio leads to overlap in the frequency domain, making it impossible to unpick like a human brain would manage to naturally. The technology does exist, but for highly specific applications, such as speech extraction from music. The problem is that each application is so specialized that it wouldn't be practical to put in a consumer-grade device like a mobile phone.

With all of this in mind the only way to get decent audio for live events from the devices available to consumers is by circumventing the issue of phone microphones entirely. The best way to sync audio quality with video quality is to take the audio directly from the mixer - with its multiple array of professional microphones - the same audio that would be going to the live speakers or broadcast. Take the live audio before it is audible.

TagMix accomplishes this by taking this audio from the mixer, uploading it to the cloud directly, and “swapping out” the audio when it is detected in the user's video content. In practical terms, this means users are able to have concert quality audio in their UGC without the overwhelming sound of the crowd, or being limited by the microphones they have available. In order to enhance the impact that UGC can have for the venue or artist, the TagMix app also helps users to share their moments frictionlessly. It also makes the music used in UGC traceable, ensuring artists and other rights holders are compensated wherever their music is played.
At any time, the TagMix app automatically adds the official live audio directly to the user generated video.
Ultimately, the whole music ecosystem will benefit from enhanced, shareable UGC videos. With the user being able to post content across multiple social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat simultaneously, TagMix goes far beyond boosting social media impact for the end user. TagMix allows venues, promoters, and artists to benefit through increased SEO and meaningful alignment via Spotify calls to action being embedded directly into the finished content.

Our technology has already been made available across multiple stages at music festivals such as Ultra, Tomorrowland, and Hideout, while we have also been present at conferences including Ibiza's International Music Summit, Miami Music Week, and the Amsterdam Dance event. Further expansion of the use of our technology is planned in the United Kingdom later in the summer.

The importance of UCG is only going to continue growing as time goes on, and we’re likely to see a spike in its importance in the short term as events, venues, and artists attempt to coax people back into attending following the devastating impact the coronavirus pandemic has had on live events. It is a perfect tool for building brand awareness, building a community, and maximizing organic growth, and a tool that is only enhanced by making it easy for people to represent your event in the best possible way using the best quality video and audio available.
Market Update 2021
True Wireless Earbuds Evolving Toward Hearables
By J. Martins
This audioXpress Market Update addresses "True Wireless Earbuds Evolving Toward Hearables" - an overview of what is happening in this vibrant product category in 2021. In a market that is predicted to continue to grow and surpass other consumer electronic product categories, this article provides an overview of the state-of the-art technologies and platforms, as well as some reference approaches in product design. As both headphones and true wireless earbuds continue to gain augmented audio features, benefiting from the latest advancements in audio processing, active noise cancellation, spatial audio, and other innovations, we will see even more acceleration in building up the basic blocks toward hearables. This article was published in audioXpress, April 2021.  Read the Full Article Now Available Here
Voice Coil Test Bench
Beyma CD-11Nd Compression Driver and TD-194 Horn
By Vance Dickason
This Test Bench characterizes the CD-11Nd compression driver and the TD-194 horn from pro sound OEM, Acustica Beyma. Designed for use with 1" throat horns, the CD-11Nd has a 25.4mm (1") throat diameter driven by a 44.4mm (1.75") diameter voice coil wound both inside and outside of a non-conduction Kapton-type former with aluminum wire. The diaphragm and surround are composed of a single piece of PM4, which is a proprietary high-tech polymer that, according to the company, has never before been used for audio. The CD-11Nd also incorporates a cast-aluminum cover with a black emissive coating on the cover and the plates. Other features include a FEA-optimized neodymium magnet motor structure, a program power handling of 140W with a 70W AES power handling rating, a 1.5kHz recommended crossover frequency, and 1W/1m 111dB sensitivity (measured on a Beyma TD-164 horn). The TD-194 horn has a 90° × 40° coverage pattern and is made from cast aluminum. For ease of mounting, the horn is square and the horizontal and vertical orientation is molded into the outer edge. This article was published in Voice Coil, April 2021. Read the Complete Article Online Here
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