Amazon\u2019s Director of Audio at Lab126 explains the interesting design decisions behind the company\u2019s affordable Apple AirPods rivals.<\/b>
\nDespite being seen as a somewhat controversial – and slightly tacky – move, Amazon had a good reason to add a smile logo to the outside of its Amazon Echo Buds (2nd Gen) true wireless earbuds. According to the company\u2019s Head of Audio, people kept putting them in wrong. \u201cWe found that with our first-generation, people were actually putting them in upside down or backwards,\u201d said Phil Hilmes, Director of Audio at Amazon\u2019s Devices & Services Team. \u201cIt\u2019s understandable if you haven\u2019t worn a pair before, and some people have really big ears so they actually fit in there upside down.\u201d You read that right, Amazon had to put the smile logo on there to prevent people from putting in the earbuds upside down. \u201cHaving that smile logo actually helps them say, \u2018OK, this is the right way this goes in there\u2019 and it helps orient the microphone towards your mouth while still being subtle.\u201d There\u2019s an old adage in computer engineering that products can\u2019t be fast, good and cheap, but only two out of the three. The way that Hilmes talks about audio design – and specifically the tradeoffs that have to be made when designing a pair of earbuds like the Echo Buds – you can tell he\u2019s heard it before. In a discussion with TechRadar, Hilmes talked about the decisions that went into making the 2nd Generation Buds – choosing to include a larger full-range driver instead of a dual driver design and building an efficient noise-cancelling algorithm that saves on battery life. \u201cWe switched over to a dynamic driver on the second-gen earbuds and the driver diameter is 5.7mm – which sounds small, and is small – but we decided to make the tradeoff in diameter to get better excursion so that we can really push a lot of air and that helps with so many different things. Of course, that includes good bass response but also it enabled us to put a vent in [to alleviate a build up of pressure]. \u201cWe wanted to make sure that we had best-in-class ANC so to do that you need to have a lot of head room in your low frequencies to cancel out that noise. We did a trade-off with that and size,\u201d Hilmes said. While Hilmes didn\u2019t share too much information about his time working at Lab126, Amazon\u2019s premier hardware lab responsible for the creation of the Amazon Echo, Echo Show, Echo Studio and Echo Buds, among dozens of other devices, he has a long history of innovation in the lab. As the author of several white papers on noise cancellation and echo reduction, speech recognition and sound detection, Hilmes has been responsible for a number of the innovations you\u2019ve seen in the Amazon Echo lineup for the better part of a decade now. \u201cWhat impressed me immediately once I joined [Lab126] is the startup mentality the whole place has. I know that\u2019s common throughout Amazon, but I feel like it\u2019s even more so within Lab126: \u2018If you\u2019ve got an idea, let\u2019s go make it\u2019. Whether it\u2019s something new and creative – like a new algorithm – one of our leadership principles is to invent and simplify.\u201d That doesn\u2019t mean every product that comes out of Amazon\u2019s engineering wing is flawless – as we saw during our recent review of the new Amazon Echo Show 15 – but it does mean that the team is tackling new problems and looking for ways to innovate on what\u2019s already out there. When asked his thoughts on the advent of spatial audio on earbuds like the Apple AirPods and the Sony WF-1000XM4, Hilmes agreed that there\u2019s a lot of innovation happening – but the end result just doesn\u2019t compare to a true spatial audio setup in your living room. \u201cI think spatial audio is great for earbuds and headphones alike, but it also comes with big challenges because generally the spatial experience is better in an actual room. The tricky thing is that everyone\u2019s ears are different and so trying to compensate for that is a challenge. I\u2019ve seen lots of potential solutions for that, like some companies scanning your ears, but some work better than others,\u201d Hilmes said. \u201cHead tracking is a good solution for that, but you have to get everything right\u2026 Trying to head tracking with virtualization is a challenge.\u201d \u201cWhat I would say is that I haven\u2019t seen anything yet that does nearly as well as speakers in a room yet, but there\u2019s very good progress and I know it will get there.\u201d For now it sounds like we\u2019re a few years away from spatial audio sound on the next pair of Amazon Echo Buds, but with Hilmes at the helm, we\u2019ll be excited to hear the results when they eventually arrive.<\/p>\n