Update from Asahi Kasei Microdevices - The Return of Velvet Sound

Following the major fire that destroyed its semiconductor factory in Japan, Asahi Kasei Microdevices (AKM) is back online and promises new announcements in January 2022. audioXpress received notice from Gaku Suzuki, General Manager for Digital Marketing HiFi ICs at AKM that the company's famed Velvet Sound DACs and ADCs are about to resume production. We also learned that the company intends to focus on a new generation of chips and offer updated replacements for existing references.

Could Auricle have cracked the code of headphone isolation and hearing augmentation in an open-ear form-factor? Auricle, a company founded in 2018 and based in Denmark, identified the common problem of situational awareness or lack thereof when using headphones. In response, Auricle perfected bone conduction technology in a wireless design that still leaves the ear canal completely open. A platform with great potential for hearing augmentation, and a novel personal audio design that combines awareness, communication, hearing, and fun.

Making Audio Augmentation useful for everyone, or pursue the regulatory requirements of OTC hearing aids. This article offers a useful perspective regarding the guidance documents published by the US Food and Drug Administration regarding improved access to hearing aid technology. The agency proposes a rule to establish a new category of over-the-counter (OTC) hearing aids - to be sold directly to consumers in stores or online without a medical exam or a fitting by an audiologist. But most audio manufacturers are better off by not pursuing this FDA-approved OTC market. Doing so will simply hinder critical experimentation and innovation.

Back in January 2015, I gave a talk about MEMS loudspeakers, and I have regularly written about MEMS speaker progress. A half decade later, it seems we are finally now moving beyond the industry's joke that MEMS’ development progress can be measured in dog years: it takes 7 human years for each year of MEMS’ progress! The big news is xMEMS Labs, a company founded just in January 2018, has announced it is now in mass production of its Montara, a monolithic MEMS “µspeaker” with a slim 1mm profile, and announced Cowell, the world’s smallest monolithic MEMS µSpeaker, at just 1.15mm high and 3.2mm wide.

Audio for USB video conference must be much better than audio for desktop conferencing. Think audio zooming on the speaker, high-end noise suppression and echo cancellation. Even 3D audio. As good as or better than high end conference systems. Pre-pandemic, video conferencing was a rather staid market. At the high-end, big expensive systems and plans for corporations. At the low-end, free Skype for the rest of us. Now, USB video conferencing is moving fast to redefine the domain.

Consumers are increasingly looking to have high quality sound integrated into their lives in creative ways. However, ensuring that their demands are met across connectivity and sound can be hard to achieve. Often, the more creative and interesting the application, the higher chance it’s harder to produce a sound that is perfect for every use case.

A New Must-Read Loudspeaker History Book. SEAS: The History of SEAS Fabrikker is an engaging story about the Norwegian manufacturer and its place in the Nordic speaker industry. The book about Scandinavian Electro Acoustic Systems (SEAS) was written by Danish loudspeaker engineer Claus Futtrup and jointly published by SEAS and Futtrup. Mike Klasco reviews the book for The Audio Voice newsletter and audioXpress.

Great voice recognition can only start with great voice pickup. If cost is no object, of course you can build a great solution. Just use high-end voice activity detection, many-microphone beamforming and echo cancellation and you’ll have a premium product for high-end markets. But can you also satisfy mid-range markets with attractive pricing? This article discusses techniques to offer solutions for both markets.

User generated smartphone videos that sound perfect? TagMix created an app that automatically adds the official live audio directly to the user generated video. In this article, Ciaran Maloy writes about how TagMix enhances the quality of user-generated content by giving them a professional, authorized soundtrack. This article was originally published in The Audio Voice newsletter.

Great voice recognition can only start with great voice pickup. Just “OK” pickup will greatly compromise recognition accuracy and increase user frustration. The high speech quality you need demands a high-quality audio front-end. And if cost is no object, of course you can build a great solution. But can you also satisfy mid-range markets with attractive pricing?