Sonical and Sigma Connectivity Accelerate Hearables Product Development

Sonical, the company pioneering a fully integrated approach for the product development of headphones and hearables, with a real-time operating system that allows consumers to load their own apps has confirmed a development partnership with Sigma Connectivity, the leading Swedish technology design and engineering house. Sigma will help Sonical accelerate the market transition to Headphone 3.0 and the adoption of user driven wearable audio devices.

Sonical, the company pioneering a fully integrated approach for the product development of headphones and hearables, with a real-time operating system that allows consumers to load their own apps, will partner with XMOS for its Headphone 3.0 demonstrations at CES 2024. The two companies will showcase a first joint development that will greatly enhance wireless audio quality with huge benefits to the feature set in Sonical's roadmap.

Sonical, the Headphone 3.0 pioneer based in San Mateo, CA, and IDUN audio, the leading-edge startup from Copenhagen, Denmark, specializing in dynamic spatial audio for headphones, have formalized a strategic partnership. The two companies have been cooperating since 2022, and IDUN audio was part of the Sonical CES 2023 demos, with its dynamic spatial audio software running on Sonical's headphone operating system CosmOS - enabling unsurpassed spatialization with fast head tracking.

PSB Speakers, together with hearables start-up Sonical and audio codecs specialists MQA, announced a partnership that intends to define a new category of high-resolution audio headphones. The collaboration is aimed at creating true hifi headphones and smart earbuds, combining MQA's SCL6 high resolution wireless audio transmission and Sonical’s CosmOS platform. Planned for release under the PSB Speakers brand by Q1 2024, the resulting products will be the first headphones to feature Sonical’s ear computing platform, enabling a variety of apps and software upgrades.

Packetcraft, a leading provider of Bluetooth embedded stacks and software solutions, announced their Bluetooth Qualified LE Controller is shipping with Nordic Semiconductor’s flagship nRF5340 dual-core Bluetooth 5.3 SoC enabling LE Audio in commercial products. At CES 2023, Packetcraft is already showcasing Bluetooth LE Audio and Auracast broadcast audio applications using Nordic’s nRF5340 SoC, including from Sonical, EMSi and Fanstel.

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.