While it's considered a somewhat controversial move, and a bit cheesy, Amazon had good reason for adding a smiley logo to the outside of its Amazon Echo Buds (2nd Gen) true wireless earbuds.
According to the company's audio manager, people kept making mistakes.
“We found that with our first generation, people were putting them upside down or upside down,” said Phil Hilmes, director of audio for Amazon's Devices and Services team. “It's understandable if you've never worn a pair before, and some people have really big ears, so they fit inside out. "
You read that right, Amazon had to put the smiley logo on it to prevent people from wearing the headphones backwards.
“Having that smiley logo actually helps them say, 'Okay, that's the right way to go,' and helps point the mic at your mouth while still being subtle. "
The delicate balance of space, better sound, better battery life and a price
There is an old adage in computer engineering that products cannot be fast, good and cheap, but only two out of three. The way Hilmes talks about audio design, and especially the trade-offs that need to be made when designing a pair of headphones like the Echo Buds, arguably you've heard it before.
In a discussion with LaComparacion, Hilmes discussed the decisions made to manufacture the second-generation Buds, choosing to include a wider full-range controller rather than a dual-controller design and creating an efficient, life-saving noise cancellation algorithm. useful battery.
“We switched to a dynamic pilot on the second generation headset and the diameter of the pilot is 5,7mm, which feels small and small, but we decided to compromise the diameter to get better excursion so we can really push a lot of air out and that help with so many different things. Of course, this includes good bass response, but it also allowed us to put a breather in .
“We wanted to make sure we had the best ANC in its class. To do this, you need to have plenty of headroom in your low frequencies to cancel out this noise. We committed to that and to size, ”Hilmes said.
(*two*)
(Image credit: Avenir)Hilmes is the reason why Alexa can understand you
While Hilmes hasn't shared much information about his time working at Lab126, Amazon's first hardware lab responsible for creating the Amazon Echo, Echo Show, Echo Studio, and Echo Buds, among dozens of other devices, has a long history of innovation from laboratory. .
As the author of several white papers on noise cancellation and echo reduction, speech recognition, and sound detection, Hilmes is responsible for a number of innovations that he has seen in the Amazon Echo range for nearly a decade.
"What immediately struck me once I joined is the startup mentality that the whole place has. I know this is common at Amazon, but I get the impression that it is even more true within Lab126: “If you have an idea, Let's do it.” Whether it's something new and creative, like a new algorithm, one of our leadership principles is to invent and simplify.
This doesn't mean that all of the products on Amazon's engineering wing are flawless, as we saw in our recent review of the new Amazon Echo Show 15, but it does mean that the team has tackled new problems and is looking for ways to innovate on what already exists. .
Spatial audio is a hot area of innovation, but it might be best left out for now.
When asked what he thought about the advent of spatial audio in headphones like Apple's AirPods and Sony WF-1000XM4, Hilmes agreed that there were a lot of innovations, but the end result just doesn't compare to actual spatial audio. install in your living room.
What I would say is that I have yet to see anything that works nearly as well as speakers in a room, but there is really good progress and I know it will get there.
Phil Hilmes, Audio Manager at Amazon“I think spatial audio is great for headphones and earphones, but it also presents some big challenges because in general the spatial experience is better in a real room. The tricky part is that everyone's ears are different and so trying to compensate for that is a challenge. I have seen many potential solutions for this, such as some companies scanning your ears, but some work better than others,” Hilmes said. “Head tracking is a good solution for this, but you have to do everything right... Trying to track head with virtualization is challenging. "
"What I would say is that I haven't seen anything perform nearly as well as speakers in a room yet, but there's really good progress and I know it's going to happen."
For now, it looks like we're a few years away from spatial audio on the next pair of Amazon Echo Buds, but with Hilmes leading the way, we'll be happy to hear the results when they finally arrive.