External Sound-Permitting Ear Tips for Audio Quality and Awareness
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional in-ear earphones that seal the ear canal prevent users from being aware of their surroundings, and transparency modes in these earphones are unnatural and consume additional power, while open-ear designs interfere with accessories and degrade audio quality.
Innovation Solution
In-ear earphones with external sound-permitting tips featuring channels that allow ambient noise to enter the ear canal, combined with a digital signal processor to selectively cancel external sounds, maintaining audio quality and user awareness.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Manufacturing precision
If the ear canal is sealed to block external noise, then audio quality is improved, but user awareness of surroundings deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The ear tip is segmented into multiple functional zones: a sealed portion for audio quality and an unsealed portion with openings for ambient noise entry. This segmentation allows simultaneous achievement of both audio isolation and environmental awareness without compromising either function.
2Loss of information
If transparency mode is implemented to allow external sound, then user awareness of surroundings is improved, but power consumption increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts the ambient noise transmission function from the electrical signal processing system and implements it through physical openings in the ear tip. This eliminates the need for active transparency mode electronics, thereby maintaining user awareness while avoiding additional power consumption.
3Loss of information
If open-ear design is used to allow external sound, then user awareness of surroundings is improved, but audio quality deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
Different portions of the ear tip have different acoustic properties: the sealed portion provides good audio isolation for high-quality audio playback, while the unsealed portion with openings allows ambient noise entry. This local differentiation of properties enables simultaneous optimization of both audio quality and environmental awareness.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
The solution allows users to be aware of their surroundings without degrading audio quality, while minimizing the issues of location shifting and power consumption associated with transparency modes in conventional earphones.
Implementation Method 1
external sound-permitting tips featuring channels that allow ambient noise to enter the ear canal
Implementation Method 2
combined with a digital signal processor to selectively cancel external sounds
Data Source
AI summary
An in-ear earphone includes a digital signal processor (DSP), a speaker operatively coupled to the DSP; an external microphone operatively coupled to the DSP, and an in-ear earphone power management unit (PMU) to provide power to the DSP the speaker, and the external microphone. The in-ear earphone includes an earphone in-ear external sound-permitting tip operatively coupled to the in-ear earphone, the earphone in-ear external sound-permitting tip for insertion into a user's ear canal and including tip channels to allow noise to enter into the user's ear canal. The DSP executes computer-readable program code of a noise cancelling module to cancel, from audio input from the external microphone, sounds external to a user's ear canal.