xMEMS Announces Tomales MEMS Tweeter for Smart Glasses and Extended Reality Headset Applications

xMEMS Labs introduced Tomales, a new monolithic, 1mm-thin profile MEMS tweeter µspeaker, available with top and side-firing package options that simplify speaker placement and positioning to direct audio toward the ear in smart glasses and augmented/extended reality headset applications. This new MEMS driver, which uses the company second generation M2 speaker cell architecture, has an IP58 rating for dust/water that simplifies system integration in these designs.

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.

xMEMS Labs today introduced Cowell, the world’s smallest monolithic MEMS µspeaker, targeting the replacement of balanced armature drivers in true wireless earbuds and hearing aid designs. At just 22mm3, 56 milligrams, and with a 3.2mm diameter side-firing package, Cowell delivers an impressive 110dB SPL at 1kHz. Cowell is the first speaker to use xMEMS’ 2nd generation M2 speaker cell architecture offering improved SPL/mm2 enabling increased loudness in smaller form factors.