All items in category Blogs
Meeting Supply for Vacuum Tubes - Time to Save Those Tubes?
by Joao Martins

Meeting Supply for Vacuum Tubes - Time to Save Those Tubes?

The situation in Ukraine and the sanctions imposed on Russia are having a significant impact on the global supply of tubes to the audio industry. Both Ukraine and Russia are important suppliers of raw materials, and the sanctions are likely to cause further strain over the supply of source materials that all manufacturers of tubes need. In China there are also significant disruptions caused by pandemic lockdowns, transportation challenges, and cost increases. How many tube manufacturing operations remain viable? Western Electric says there is hope... in the US!
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The MEMS Microphone Book- What's Different (And So Promising) With MEMS Microphones
by Joao Martins

The MEMS Microphone Book- What's Different (And So Promising) With MEMS Microphones

In this article I share my early impressions of The MEMS Microphone Book by Mikko Suvanto. 21 years in the making, this is a reference book with over 600 pages and I decided that I should write about it here ASAP, because I believe that the work deserves attention and I'm confident enough on the quality of the content to recommend it. The MEMS Microphone Book, "A practical guide to reliable high-quality sound capturing with miniature microphones" (ISBN 978-952-94-5660-4) is available and my article details what it contains and who should read it.
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The Standards We Need: Do Audio Technologies Matter in the Smart Home?
by Joao Martins

The Standards We Need: Do Audio Technologies Matter in the Smart Home?

Matter is an industry-unifying standard for the Smart Home that promises reliable, secure connectivity — a seal of approval that devices will work seamlessly together. But... Do audio technologies matter in the Smart Home? The audio industry needs to get involved in this convergence and interoperability effort. After all, we can already tell a speaker to play a song - thanks to voice recognition technology, AI, and wireless networks - but we still don’t have a transparent wireless audio standard to stream audio to speakers or headphones because basically audio remains restricted by specifications that were not written with audio in mind.
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The Standards We Need. A Review of the Book "Introducing Bluetooth LE Audio" by Nick Hunn
by Joao Martins

The Standards We Need. A Review of the Book "Introducing Bluetooth LE Audio" by Nick Hunn

This article is a review of the recently distributed book, Introducing Bluetooth LE Audio, by Nick Hunn, Chair of the Bluetooth SIG Hearing Aid Working Group, Vice Chair of the Generic Audio Working Group and a key contributor to the Bluetooth LE Audio specifications. This is an important book for everyone who wants to understand Bluetooth LE Audio. But has the industry momentum for Bluetooth LE Audio been lost? Two years after the original Bluetooth LE Audio announcement in 2020, all we have is a Book.
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CES 2022 Audio Highlights. 10 Companies We Want to See and Hear Again!
by Joao Martins

CES 2022 Audio Highlights. 10 Companies We Want to See and Hear Again!

It was just like CES 2022 was a blink. We walked all over CES 2022, from hotel suites and halls - literally and virtually - to report on these great audio companies and technologies! Among our #CES2022 audio highlights we discuss presentations and demos from xMEMS Labs, Noveto, Exeger, Mayht, Tectonic, Resonado, Fraunhofer IIS, Silentium, GaN Systems, and Axign. Text and CES report originally published in The Audio Voice weekly newsletter.
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Update from Asahi Kasei Microdevices - The Return of Velvet Sound
by Joao Martins

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.
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Natural Hearing and Augmentation. A New Approach to Open-Ear.
by Joao Martins

Natural Hearing and Augmentation. A New Approach to Open-Ear.

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.
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Reading Glasses and Hearing Aids. Smart or FDA-Approved. Pick One.
by Joao Martins

Reading Glasses and Hearing Aids. Smart or FDA-Approved. Pick One.

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.
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xMEMS Samples Ultra-Small Full-Range Microspeaker
by Mike Klasco

xMEMS Samples Ultra-Small Full-Range Microspeaker

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.
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Premium Video Conferencing for Everyone - Audio for USB Video Conference Must Be Better
by Elia Shenberger

Premium Video Conferencing for Everyone - Audio for USB Video Conference Must Be Better

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.
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