Beyond the Smartwatch: Three Wearable Technology Trends to Watch

As the smartwatch market matures, the capabilities of alternative wearables continue to expand. In the coming years, alternative form factors could begin tempting consumers away. Not only could these devices provide more value – they also have the potential to access new biometrics. The wearable technology industry is being driven by the demand for more data – but is faced with hitting maturity during an era of economic contraction. This article summarizes what life could look like beyond the smartwatch boom, with three trends to watch.

Ido Gus, Deep Learning Senior Team Leader at CEVA’s Sensor and Audio Business Unit, writes about voice control deployment on low power and resource constrained microcontroller-units (MCUs). The article discusses what to consider for the development of products using voice as a primary human interface, and how speech recognition models using AI technology can support a wide variety of use cases and languages, without compromising on power requirements.

From AES67 to Internet Protocol Media Experience (IPMX). With the adoption of AES67 comes the need for networked professional AV standards. In this article, Andrew Starks, AIMS Marketing Workgroup Chair and Director of Product Management at Macnica, offers an audio perspective about the Internet Protocol Media Experience (IPMX) Initiative and specifications, discussing the specific implications of dealing with asynchronous sources.

What more could speaker system designers want? How about not just to protect the speaker from overload, but enable the speaker to play louder with reduced bass distortion? Mike Klasco writes about his experience working with Nuvoton smart amps with integrated Klippel Controlled Sound (KCS) technology. Now in mass production and offering new possibilities for speaker design. First product examples are now available in the market.

Mike Klasco writes about Dr. Kurt Müller's 100-Year Anniversary and revisits the milestones of this important supplier of cones, suspensions, dust caps and surrounds company. Perhaps the oldest surviving cone factory in the world and certainly one of the most advanced, DKM was originally founded in 1922, in Berlin, and in 1970, extended its product range with the acquisition of Pulsonic Ultrasonics Limited (now known as Kurt Mueller UK Ltd) in the United Kingdom. Happy Birthday!

Enter Sonical Headphone 3.0. A fully integrated approach for the product development of headphones and earbuds that allows consumers to load their own apps. audioXpress talked to Gary Spittle, the CEO and founder of Sonical, a young company that developed a chip and a real-time operating system for headphones and hearables. "Hearables should not be defined by the functions of a chip or the Bluetooth profiles, there is a lot more that product makers want to do," says Gary Spittle, the CEO and founder of Sonical.

If you are an audio industry professional, unless you have been on holiday on some remote island without Internet, you must have noticed that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) finally issued the long-expected rule establishing Over-the-Counter (OTC) hearing aids - five years after the original OTC hearing aid act was signed into law on August 18, 2017. Will hearing aid companies really adjust and understand "consumer" behaviors? How do hearables fit in that environment? Could these products be influenced by "brand loyalty"?

Following the publication of the full set of LE Audio specifications by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG), the industry is now putting together the building blocks that will enabling bringing products supporting the next generation of Bluetooth audio to market. This article explains what is needed and how to support Auracast broadcast audio, a new Bluetooth capability that enables an audio transmitter to broadcast to an unlimited number of nearby Bluetooth audio receivers.

Podcasting and Spatial Audio are a natural combination. These two great sound experiences are about to sound great together. With the listening public drawn to both spoken word podcasts and immersive music, audio professionals say the next big thing is spatial audio podcasts — storytelling engineered to place the listener right in the middle of things.

In this article originally published in The Audio Voice newsletter, Barry Vogel (ALTI Executive Director) writes about the Audio & Loudspeaker Technologies International Association renewed mission and vision. Short after ALTI Expo 2022 took place in Las Vegas under challenging circumstances, ALTI members have reaffirmed their commitment towards the industry association. ALTI Association celebrated its 60th anniversary in 2021 and the landmark moment was acknowledged during ALTI Expo 2022, after two years of global pandemic. The celebration was an important reminder of the importance of keeping the industry together for everyone that attended the event.