How to Select MEMS Microphones

Today, most audio products, from Bluetooth speakers to appliances with voice command, now contain at least one microphone. If the product was designed a couple of years ago, it had an electret condenser microphone (ECM), but today it will most likely use a MicroElectrical-Mechanical System (MEMS) microphone. Spec’ing MEMS microphones has some differences and this article touches upon these points.

With demand growing worldwide for high-fidelity music content and playback through mobile devices, Cirrus Logic has introduced the low power CS43130 MasterHIFI digital-to-analog converter (DAC) with headphone amplifier. The new CS43130 DAC minimizes board space requirements, operates at 4x lower power consumption, supports DSD formats, includes a NOS Filter and 512 single-bit elements to eliminate unwanted noise from the signal and for best filter response.

Questyle Audio demoed its famed “Current Mode” powered audiophile systems in a new DAC/amp combo - the CMA600i - as well as even higher-grade Reference Edition components at the CanJam SoCal 2016 event in Costa Mesa, California. The affordable integrated DAC and amplifier CMA600i with balanced output is certainly great news for all headphone enthusiasts around the world.

Korean company Astell&Kern (iRiver) has managed to forge an interesting niche market by developing and manufacturing portable high-resolution audio players. The company announced their latest-generation flagship portable HRA Player, the AK380, with 32-bit/384kHz PCM and DSD support. At the same time, Astell&Kern launched the much more affordable AK Jr.

Cirrus Logic confirmed the acquisition of Wolfson Microelectronics . The Austin Texas company says the acquisition of the Scotish company will strengthen its leadership position in Audio ICs and Software for Portable Applications, adding new product categories such as MEMS microphones to their portfolio.

ARM announced a new digital signal processing (DSP) ‘Lab-in-a-Box’ (LiB) solution to help boost practical skills development and the creation of new ARM-based audio systems, using Cortex-M4-based microcontroller boards by STMicroelectronics and audio cards from Wolfson Microelectronics and Farnell element14.