Product Design | Audio Electronics | Acoustics | DIY | Audio Innovations
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QSC Confirms Split Q-SYS and QSC Pro Audio Operations
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Anyone who attended InfoComm 2022 could notice that something was changing when, in place of QSC, the booth was taken by a company called Q-SYS. Small signs in that booth still showed the QSC logo and the slogan "This Is Q-SYS." Now QSC has announced the appointment of the new QSC Pro Audio division with the appointment of a new leadership team of "veteran staff." QSC/Q-SYS remains a single company for now, and still shares the same board, with Joe Pham, as Chairman and CEO, and Jatan Shah as President, and Chief Operating Officer. Read More
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Thum+Mahr GmbH Sells System Integration Business and Establishes Yellowtec Brand as Separate Company
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Yellowtec is a brand firmly established in broadcast environments, particularly in radio stations. With the popularity of home studio, podcasting, and web streaming, Yellowtec saw explosive growth in its m!ka mounting system business, originally designed for radio microphones, but now adjustable to computer monitors or even webcams. Thum+Mahr GmbH, where the Yellowtec brand was created, has now decided to spin off that business into a separate company. Read More
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SoundHound Powers In-Car Voice Experiences Stellantis European Vehicles
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SoundHound AI announced the delivery of its advanced voice AI technology, including its Edge+Cloud connectivity solution, multiple language abilities, and custom wake words, to Stellantis' most popular former PSA vehicles and former FCA B-SUV segment vehicles in Europe. SoundHound’s Voice AI is currently powering enhanced in-car experiences with Edge+Cloud technology in multiple models already in the market. Read More
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Dirac and ASUS Push the Boundaries of Mobile Sound in the New ASUS ROG Phone 6
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Swedish digital audio processing specialist Dirac and ASUS, the manufacturer of electronics, computers, and mobile phones, confirmed a collaboration on the new Republic of Gamers (ROG) Phone 6 series of gaming-oriented smartphones. These new models from the specialty brand - intended to establish a new standard in mobile audio - feature improved sound technology and Dirac Virtuo spatial audio to fully immerse gamers in the heart of the action. Read More
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Fraunhofer Cingo Immersive Listening Now Available in Audio Weaver
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DSP Concepts announced that its Audio Weaver development platform for audio products now also offers access to the Fraunhofer Cingo family of immersive processing tools. The agreement with Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits (IIS) allows audio product developers to enhance headphones, earbuds and speakers with binaural audio processing for immersive 3D sound with head tracking, as well as enhance existing stereo content, including loudness optimization and equalization. Cingo supports all channel-based formats and direct rendering of audio objects with associated position metadata, which can be transmitted as MPEG-H Audio. Read More
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Snap One Launches Triad PDX Installation Speaker Series
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Snap One - for those who don't remember is the company that resulted from the acquisition and merger of SnapAV with Control4 – has announced the launch of the Triad PDX Series of architectural speakers. The new series is intended to provide integrators with a solution that pairs the premium audio performance for which Triad is known with a simplified installation experience made possible by Push Lock by Swarm technology. These will also be the first Triad speakers launched into local stores and made available globally. Read More
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SoundTube Releases Surface-Mount Subwoofer with Versatile Mounting Options
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SoundTube, an MSE Audio brand and creator of the original Pendant Speaker, announced the release of the SM1001 Surface-Mount Subwoofer, a versatile 10” subwoofer that uses a downward-firing passive radiator and is ideal for rapid installation in retail environments and restaurants. The new subwoofer design comes with surface-mount and corner-mount brackets, allowing the cabinet to stay detached from the floor, or even positioned from a ceiling corner. Read More
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Monoprice Adds THX Certified In-Wall Home Theater Speakers to its Monolith Line
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Monolith, the high-end audio brand from e-commerce specialist Monoprice, announced the addition of two new in-wall home theater speaker solutions that have been THX Certified for the highest level of accuracy and impact. The budget-friendly brand continues to expand its range of THX Certified home theater solutions, now adding THX Certified Select and THX Certified Ultra in-wall speakers to complement the in-room and subwoofer designs already available . Read More
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Industry Veteran Kieran Harney Joins sensiBel
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sensiBel, the Norwegian company developing optical MEMS microphones, continues to expand its team of electronics, optics and acoustics technology experts, as well as growing its business and leadership team. Following the announcement earlier in 2022 that the company is ramping up its production, sensiBel confirmed that Kieran Harney has now joined the sensiBel team to lead the company's business development in the Americas. Read More
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Editor's Desk
J. Martins
(Editor-in-Chief)
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Bluetooth LE Audio Specifications Are Now Available
The Work Actually Starts Now
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I truly hadn’t planned to write about Bluetooth again this week, but the announcements gave me no option since the Bluetooth SIG confirmed the completion of the long-awaited LE Audio specifications - which many, including myself, assumed were ready in 2020.
The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) - the trade association that oversees Bluetooth technology - finally completed the full set of specifications that define LE Audio. The release of this set of specifications will finally enable manufacturers to design and release products supporting the full scope of improvements promised for the next-generation Bluetooth audio, including Auracast broadcast audio.
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According to the Bluetooth SIG, Bluetooth LE Audio was designed to improve wireless audio performance via the use of LC3, add Bluetooth support for hearing aids, and introduce Auracast broadcast audio and audio sharing, two new Bluetooth capabilities that will enhance the way users engage with others and in social environments.
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This is an important moment for many reasons. So far, by browsing through the latest documents, I couldn't conclude much more than the things that already have been described. Developers will basically need to read those documents as a way to validate what they already know/expected and have been doing. There are a lot of requirements that are use-case dependent, with a lot of open doors for experimentation, which means that we will still have to wait to see what companies and developers will be able to conceive.
And that is what matters for now, since we know many companies have been waiting for this set of documents to finally conclude developments, setup test and validation of concepts, and in many cases confirm update compatibility - or confirm vendors for the next projects. The hearing-aid industry is the one that will likely respond more enthusiastically, since this new specification was designed for their requirements and applications.
For companies such as CEVA, Cadence, Qualcomm, Nordic Semiconductor, Packetcraft, Laird Connectivity, Synopsys, Ellisys, and many others, this is a decisive moment to start planning volume production of their chips and solutions that will support the next-generation products. In most cases, these companies have been shipping LE Audio-ready solutions for a year now.
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This was the original plan and we now know it was just a plan in January 2020. Multistream is a big technical advancement. Broadcast is now Auracast.
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Now and Then
Today, audio devices depend upon the use of Bluetooth Classic radio, also referred to as Bluetooth Basic Rate/Enhanced Data Rate (BR/EDR), a low power radio that streams data over 79 channels in the 2.4GHz unlicensed ISM (industrial, scientific, and medical) frequency band. Supporting point-to-point device communication, Bluetooth Classic is mainly used to enable wireless audio streaming and has become the standard radio protocol behind wireless speakers, headphones, and in-car entertainment systems. The Bluetooth Classic radio also enables data transfer applications, including mobile printing.
As the names suggest, Classic Audio operates on the Bluetooth Classic radio while LE Audio operates on the Bluetooth Low Energy radio. The Bluetooth Core Specification was enhanced in December 2019 to enable delivery of audio over Bluetooth LE, including the new LE Isochronous Channels feature - that didn't change. LE Audio will not only support development of the same audio products and use cases as Classic Audio, it will introduce "a new set of features that promise to improve their performance as well as enable the creation of new products and use cases," according to the Bluetooth SIG.
Bluetooth LE Audio builds on the 20+ years of industry experience and technology developments to enhance the performance of Bluetooth audio. It introduces the new Low Complexity Communications Codec (LC3), originally developed by the Fraunhofer Institute, also the source for the Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) technology and more recently the more advanced open standard LC3plus codec that combines support for high-resolution audio with low delay.
The new specification defines the use of LC3 audio codec, chosen for its robust low-power implementation possibilities - extremely suitable for hearing-aid applications - although not yet evolving toward the possibilities enabled by the LC3plus codec or similar technologies already available. The new set of LE Audio Specifications that are now finally released define the missing elements in the original 2020 framework, with the last one being the Public Broadcast Profile (PBP), which defines global, interoperable support for broadcast audio use cases, such as public address systems and televisions. The final specification now downloadable (approved July 5, 2022) defines "how a Broadcast Source can use extended advertising data (AD) to signal that it is transmitting broadcast Audio Streams that can be discovered and rendered by Broadcast Sinks that support commonly used audio configurations."
Another document that demands more attention is the Telephony and Media Audio (TMAP) Profile v1.0 that defines the set of Bluetooth features by specifying interoperable configurations of the lower-level audio services and profiles. "In addition to introducing new features to Bluetooth audio, LE Audio offers a new, flexible architecture that provides an ideal platform for future wireless audio innovation, and work within the Bluetooth SIG is already underway to bring additional LE Audio features and capabilities to market," the Bluetooth SIG states.
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Audio Sharing is probably the main thing that consumers will notice in the next generation of LE Audio wireless audio products, even though it is not yet very clear how the hand-off between users listening to different streams to share the same stream will happen from minimalistic TWS earbuds with very little control options.
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Differentiation
I'm very curious to see how much differentiation these initial Bluetooth LE Audio products will represent for consumers. In my opinion, the first thing they will notice will be the audio sharing feature, which is something new, and very likely will also imply that Bluetooth products (true wireless earbuds in particular) behave much more reliably when it comes to pairing to sources, and toggle between sources.
I am certain that the implementation will vary from manufacturer to manufacturer initially, since the concept of "switching" between Bluetooth sources is not yet clear - and I hope it doesn't imply people clicking furiously on their earbuds. Today, having a set of earbuds connecting to three different sources belonging to the same user, and switching reliably (fast!) between them is still a feature on the wish list. Being able to "find" another Bluetooth audio streaming source that another user wants to share with me - when most likely I'm busy listening to my own stream - is not evident. And when it comes to Auracast broadcast audio in public spaces, I have a long list of implementation doubts the more I think about it.
There's no question that it’s up to the manufacturers to find the right interface for users to be able to "tune in" to different Bluetooth streams, and that starts unavoidably with an app interface, which in turn runs on a smartphone that in turn supports Wi-Fi, which is a much more robust and efficient way to distribute broadcast audio channels. To switch on screen-less Bluetooth devices, passcodes, NFC, QR codes, and channel scanners, all those things (might) work in some contexts but not always. Earbuds alone with touch sensors, voice commands, and even physical buttons will not cut it. Of course, there's always the possibility to combine some sort of pairing using some of the tools in the Bluetooth set - but the usability and user interaction remains unclear for now.
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Auracast? Have a look at Silent Disco. This stuff has been around for a while. This stuff works well because it's built over a very robust RF implementation not within the reach for Bluetooth. These silent parties are unlike any other because there can be live DJs playing different music, all at the same time! There are no noise complaints and headphones can receive signals from up to 1,500 feet...
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Quiet Events is a nationwide Silent Disco headphone rental and event planning company that has been operating since 2012. The entertainment concept is simple and very engaging. Party-goers get special wireless headphones that can change between three Live DJs by flipping a switch, this also changes the LED colors of the headphones. Headphones can be rented for a party at home or a huge gathering of thousands.
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Sound Better? Of course, manufacturers will promote new Bluetooth LE Audio products by saying that they sound better. Yes, LC3 offers much better quality compared to SBC, but don't forget that the majority of people who truly care about audio quality and are using wireless earbuds and headphones today are hearing AAC or even aptX. So, consumers will not notice any difference, and they are not going to check the bitrate to compare...
Much more efficient? It can be. If the battery lasts longer, consumers will notice. That is a major selling point.
But just wait until we start adding features that increase usage. With marketing in the audio industry constantly promoting new audio experiences about "hearing things like you never heard it before," let's hope that Bluetooth will not create a new stigma of being only for those with hearing loss. You can bet that's what those sales guys pitching the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon Sound with aptX Lossless will say.
Another interesting angle. I noticed a recurring question on consumer tech websites: "But what’s currently unclear is whether we’ll need to buy entirely new devices to enjoy the benefits."
Well, as the saying goes, I have news for you...
That's the whole point! And not just once, but probably very regularly for the next 10 years or more, because wireless technology will keep evolving. Want headphones that last 20 years? Go wired.
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The just launched Sennheiser TV Clear from Sennheiser Hearing, combines a TV transmitter using Sonova's proprietary RF AirStream technology - for lower latency - combined with a pair of TWS earbuds that also support Bluetooth. The combination is a robust system that once paired works all the time and allows users to listen with TV sound on, while others listen on the earbuds in the same room. The smartphone app also offers unique features for speech clarity levels and the earbuds even have Ambient Awareness allowing users to still hear what other people in the room say. Bluetooth on its own will not allow this without noticeable latency.
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Don't Spoil the Party
I'll confess the feeling I have after watching this video is the same feeling that I had when I reviewed Nick Hunn's book on LE Audio. That the team that worked on this for more than a decade has been so busy building what they envisaged that they didn't noticed what happened in the industry around them.
Now, does that detract from the value of what supposedly is available in the new specifications (12,000 pages, I'm told)? As described, this started with hearing aids, and it will be absolutely brilliant for hearing aids. Because that's precisely the market that has been struggling with Bluetooth, particularly since Apple released the AirPods and sold more units in one year than there are hearing aids in the world.
I think I already said what’s most important about this in my review of the book Introducing Bluetooth LE Audio by Nick Hunn. Clearly, the working group was targeting an efficient way to build on wireless audio streaming applications that Bluetooth conquered (to the surprise of many), with a more "efficient" and robust version for hearing aids. Other than that, there was the idea of creating audio sharing applications and audio broadcast, which is now Auracast. And I wrote about my concerns in my editorial the previous week.
In the book, Nick Hunn says that "a small group of users have constantly pressed for higher quality" - and will continue to do so. "Audio devotees kept clamoring for enhanced quality, with the digital age seeing calls for even higher sampling rates, lossless codecs and increased output levels. The fact that many people over 30 now have a level of hearing loss, which means they are incapable of hearing any of these ‘improvements’ doesn’t stop product marketing managers pushing for ever higher audio quality."
Being a part of this "small group of users" I know there is a disconnect because I've been working with and listening to "high-resolution audio" or "uncompressed" material and I am more interested now in knowing how we can truly transition to something more exciting, which might be spatial audio and personalized hearing with augmentation.
What I see in this "small group" are basically all the people who care about audio, have a passion for sound, and truly invest continuously in more and better equipment. And what do we see there? People who are still using cables and even have supported the industry decision to improve the 3.5mm jack with a compact balanced version, as an example. Most are willing to go the extra mile to get dedicated players and reproduction systems that support whatever is there that is better - including aptX Lossless, aptX HD, LDAC, or LDHC.
On the streaming services front, music is now available in lossless streaming quality and high resolution audio (pick one, for now...), but more importantly, there are very large companies, such as Apple, proposing that we move on from conventional stereo reproduction and embrace spatial audio with head-tracking and even HRTF profiles. And that will be done wirelessly - hence the clear need for more bandwidth and low latency.
All the required technology pieces of the puzzle are available today. They just don't fit in a specification that was written for different requirements 10 years ago.
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Some elements that are now incorporated in the updated Bluetooth specifications are making it to market independently. The LC3 is already proving in many applications, such as this Hollyland Lark M1 Wireless Lavalier Microphone kit, which transmits 16-bit/48kHz digital audio over a 2.4GHz channel using LC3. Using a dedicated interference-free frequency hopping technology that Bluetooth cannot rival, the Lark M1 lapel microphones support a working distance in open space up to 650ft (almost 200 meters), and 130ft (40 meters) around obstacles.
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Future Wireless Audio Innovation
Good thing that apparently the Bluetooth SIG is aware of this. After all, its members are precisely the very same companies that are investing today in "proprietary" or dedicated technologies and products that "go beyond" what is possible today with Bluetooth.
We just need to hope that it doesn't take another 10 years to write a specification that we need today and that could serve the very fast evolution that will take place with hearables and hearing augmentation, as another example. I truly don't believe that the companies active in this very high volume market will be willing to wait even half that long.
The part that left me hopeful is the conclusion of the recent Bluetooth SIG announcement saying clearly that, "In addition to introducing new features to Bluetooth audio, LE Audio offers a new, flexible architecture that provides an ideal platform for future wireless audio innovation, and work within the Bluetooth SIG is already underway to bring additional LE Audio features and capabilities to market."
The work starts now.
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We know that Bluetooth is not for audiophiles and with LE Audio the chances of conquering any attention in that space are minimal. Let's hope that Bluetooth will not create a new stigma of being only for those with hearing loss..
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The Peter Bartók Interview
By Paul J. Stamler
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Originally published in audioXpress June 2006, this interview by Paul Stamler is a unique document detailing the work of Peter Bartòk (Budapest, July 31, 1924 – Florida, December 7, 2020) as a pioneering recording engineer and one of the best of the early LP-era engineers, involved in remarkable recordings with his New York City label Bartók Records, and working with Moses Asch’s Folkways Records. He also worked with Caedmon Records, a pioneer in recorded poetry and other spoken-word content, as well as disk-cutting for early-era Elektra Records and other small NYC area labels. The complete version of this interview was available only in the version made available online, which is now fully restored. Read the Full Article Now Available Here
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The Evolution of Production Line Rub & Buzz Measurements
By Steve Temme
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This important article written by the founder and President of Boston, MA-based audio measurement experts, Listen Inc., offers a complete perspective of the evolution of Rub & Buzz measurements in loudspeakers, headphone drivers, and microspeakers production lines, and how these are being addressed using the next-generation of perceptual algorithms. The article details the development of multiple types of distortion detection, starting with the conventional harmonic distortion methods that, although developed 25 years ago, are still valuable and well-used today. With this evolution overview, Temme offers a valuable comparison with what can be accessed today using modern methods, and what to apply to access production faults, determine thresholds for production yields, or understand the real impact on consumer's perception. This article was originally published in audioXpress, April 2022. Read the Full Article Now Available Here
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