Semi-in-ear Bluetooth headphones have a unique design that is designed to be hung in the hollow of the outer ear, close to the ear canal, successfully combining the advantages of traditional in-ear headphones and open-back headphones. Its semi-in-ear Bluetooth headset design not only provides better sound isolation and reduces the interference of external noise, but also avoids the cramped feeling that can be caused by fully closed headphones. This design makes the half-fit Bluetooth headset more suitable for use in everyday life, especially in situations where you need to maintain a certain level of awareness of the external environment, such as walking, cycling, or working. If users want to make a phone call or listen to music while keeping an eye on their surroundings, these headphones can also help.
When designed with true wireless technology, semi-in-ear Bluetooth headphones add to portability and comfort. With no traditional cable between the two earbuds, the true wireless design allows users to enjoy music or calls without being on their knees. This combination is especially practical in everyday life and is easy to carry. Today, I would like to introduce you to a semi-in-ear Bluetooth headset from Yamaha: TW-EF3A. In addition to the classic black and modern gray colors, the headphones also add carmine pink and pine cream green.
Important features:
- Semi-in-ear Bluetooth headphones are comfortable to wear
- Ear protection quality and sound balance function
- Clear speech
- IPX4 rated for water and sweat resistance
- Long battery life up to 26 hours
Equipment parameters
- Driver: Moving coil / 13.0mm
- Frequency response: 40Hz-19kHz
- Waterproof rating: IPX4
- Weight: 5.9g (left or right)
- Microphone: Yes
- Battery: 26 hours of continuous playback
- Ear protection quality balance: Yes
- Game Modes: Yes
- Voice Assistance: Yes
The core mission of headphones: good music and comfortable wearing
The TW-EF3A provides users with a clear and balanced music and vocal experience through its unique design, which is especially suitable for long-term wear. This advantage is due to the built-in 13mm large-diameter driver, which can be likened to a larger speaker in a music system that can transmit audio signals more efficiently and provide richer sound performance. This larger drive unit helps to fully express the energy and vibrancy of the music, just as a car with a larger engine is able to unleash more power.
The TW-EF3A is also designed with comfort in mind for long periods of wear. Unlike some earbuds that can cause ear fatigue, the TW-EF3A is designed to be more ergonomic and provide users with a more comfortable wearing experience. This design decision can be likened to the design of an ergonomic chair that supports the body and reduces fatigue from sitting for long periods of time.
What's even more worth digging into is the design idea of this earphone: Yamaha adopted the "DOE" method of experimental design in the shape design of the TW-EF3A, which is an experimental method commonly used in the development of musical instruments to find the ideal shape. Through fine-tuning the size of the products, the team created multiple prototypes and evaluated their wearing performance, essentially validating 81 different designs. This process ensures that the final shape is selected based on in-depth technical analysis and experimental evidence.
To ensure that the TW-EF3A is extremely comfortable to wear, the team paid special attention to the support structure of the earbuds. By supporting the tragus and tragus, the headphones no longer bring a sense of pressure to the user when wearing, which achieves a higher fit and stability compared with some products of the same type, and there is no need to worry about the headphones falling off. This design can be likened to the structural support in the building, ensuring that the building can exist firmly and comfortably without external interference.
The official recommended way to wear it is to hang the EF3A in the hollow part of the ear. The earbuds are gently supported by two points, tragus and tragus, which improves stability.
Engaging Yamaha TRUE SOUND concept
TRUE SOUND is a product design concept that Yamaha has been pushing in recent years, including tonal balance, dynamics, and sound and image. Among them, the vocal range is balanced: the vocals sound natural, and you won't get tired even if you listen for a long time. Dynamic: The large diaphragm area of the 13mm large-diameter driver unit can drive more air in the earphone cavity to fully vibrate, which is conducive to expressing the energy and vitality of music. Sound panning: Three sound holes on each earphone control the amount of air inside, providing a sense of space and sound localization.
The TW-EF3A's sound design focuses on making voices and vocals sound more natural, taking into account the long hours of user use and trying to avoid fatigue during hours of listening. At the level of audio engineering, this is reflected in the careful tuning of frequency response, sound balance, and distortion.
Optimization of frequency response is key to achieving natural sound quality. By employing precise frequency response curves in the design, the team sought to make the sound output of the headphones as close as possible to the original sound it was recorded in. This process can be likened to color calibration on a TV monitor, ensuring that the colors presented are consistent with the original image.
On the other hand, adjusting the sound balance is also an important part of achieving natural sound. This involves a balance of bass, midrange, and treble so that the sounds in the various frequency bands are not overpowering each other or overpowering. It's like a chef mixing up the various seasonings in a dish, making sure that each flavor is in harmony and doesn't overdo one of them. The sound design of the EF3A not only focuses on the quality of natural sound restoration, but also provides users with an audio experience that is not easy to fatigue even after long hours of use through technical means such as frequency response, sound balance and distortion processing.
Why we need clear speech technology
The TW-EF3A's clear speech function is achieved by increasing the bandwidth of the voice, which makes it easier for the listener to discern and understand the human voice. In conversation-based content, this technology can make speech clearer without increasing volume. The design concept of this feature can be likened to an increase in the resolution of a TV screen, resulting in a clearer image, and similarly, in the field of voice, the increase in bandwidth has a similar effect, enhancing the listening experience.
Yamaha has many years of experience in sound production, especially in the development of home theater equipment. For the TW-EF3A, they paid more attention to background music, sound effects and voice in the audio processing to enhance the realism of the overall visual image. This kind of processing can be likened to the adjustment of parameters such as color, contrast, and brightness in image processing, making the image more vivid and realistic.
To further optimize the TW-EF3A, Yamaha made adjustments to the frequency range. This is equivalent to adjusting the focal length of the lens in photography to capture a specific range of scenes. With this adjustment, the TW-EF3A not only suppresses low-frequency noise, but also enhances the speech bandwidth, making speech easier to recognize, whether in movie dialogue or music performance.
The clear voice function of TW-EF3A is not only to simply improve sound quality, but also to bring users a more refined and realistic sound experience through technical means, such as frequency width increase, sound processing experience accumulation and frequency range adjustment.
Protecting your ears is a top priority
The TW-EF3A's ear protection balance function is designed to reduce the risk of hearing damage by avoiding ear fatigue caused by listening to music at too high volume for a long time. At the heart of this technology is the correction of the sound to maintain audio balance at all volume levels. This function can be compared to a camera's auto-exposure adjustment, which maintains the appropriate brightness of the image based on ambient lighting, and the TW-EF3A also adjusts the sound at different volumes to maintain the right balance between high and low frequencies.
Excessive volume can put a strain on the auditory system, so the Ear Protection Quality Balance function acts as a regulator of volume to some extent. Just like the automatic speed control system when driving a car, the TW-EF3A adjusts the sound to ensure a comfortable hearing within the right range, reducing the burden on the ears.
In addition, the Ear Protection Quality Balance feature is designed with audio performance in mind at low volumes. Just like turning down the lights at night, the TW-EF3A delivers satisfying sound quality at low volumes, allowing users to fully enjoy their music even at whispered volumes, and this feature is turned on by default.
A wide range of premium performance and design are all in place
The TW-EF3A also provides a game mode for those of us who love to play games, the game mode can reduce the delay of the audio relative to the video image, which is very suitable for playing games and watching videos, and can be turned on by pressing a button on the earbuds.
Another is the battery life problem, TW-EF3A earbuds can play continuously for 10 hours when fully charged, you can use the matching USB Type-C cable to charge, if the charging case battery is full, the earbuds can be used for more than a whole day, about 16 hours of battery life. Waterproof is also a concern for many friends, and the waterproof performance of TW-EF3A is equivalent to the level of IPX4, which is safe to use even when it rains or sweats.
If you have multiple playback devices, such as mobile phones, laptops or game consoles, the TW-EF3A has version 5.3 Bluetooth technology, which can be freely switched after pairing with these devices to achieve multi-point connection function, as long as you operate one of the devices, you can immediately connect with TW-EF3A for use, which is quite convenient.
In terms of transmission, TW-EF3A adopts an advanced technology, that is, transmitting data to the left and right earphones at the same time to make more efficient use of communication bandwidth. This is equivalent to increasing the probability of the sum of the points by rolling two dice at once, thus reducing the probability of skipping and staccato problems. The key to this technology is that both the left and right earphones can acquire the required audio data at the same time, improving the efficiency of transmission and achieving a higher sound resolution, similar to increasing image resolution for a clearer image.
In order to further optimize the wireless transmission performance, the TW-EF3A has also optimized the antenna tuning, making the wireless transmission more stable and reducing the possibility of signal loss, thus providing users with a better seamless experience. Think of this process as the principle of a car navigation system adjusting its receiving antenna based on satellite signals to ensure accurate navigation.
The implementation of this technology makes the TW-EF3A more competitive in wireless transmission. By simultaneously transmitting data from the left and right earphones and optimizing antenna tuning, it not only improves the efficiency of audio data transmission, but also provides a more reliable and stable connection, providing users with a smoother music and call experience.
The sound is accurate and natural, and good music is always on the line
In this audition, we tested music and video playback by connecting the Yamaha TW-EF3A to an iPhone and iPad, and we took a deep dive into how the headphones perform in different music genres. We chose Adele's "30", Taylor Swift's "Midnights", and Kenny G's "New Standards" albums, covering different musical styles such as pop, bel canto, instrumental solo and electro.
When it comes to pop music, Adele's 30 is characterized by its strong vocals and complex arrangements. With the TW-EF3A, the voice is clearly recognizable and every part of the instrument is clearly revealed. It's like being in the studio of an album, where every detail is clearly visible, every color and contour is revealed, and Adele's singing voice is truly reproduced to an impressive extent.
For Taylor Swift's Midnights, an album intertwined with pop and electronic elements, TW-EF3A successfully conveys the dynamism and complexity of the songs. In the processing of electronic sound, the headphones present clear and accurate layering, and every sound element is clearly represented. Compared to Adele's bel canto vocals, Taylor Swift doesn't have much skill, but the songs bring a lot of emotion.
Considering that Kenny G's "New Standards" is a predominantly saxophone solo album, the TW-EF3A also does quite well when dealing with such instrumental solos. Each song feels as if it were being played live, and the reverberation of the bass and the blowing of the treble bring out the realism of the audio, especially the slight detail, spatial and balance of the individual instruments in the recording, which is fascinating.
In terms of electronic music, the TW-EF3A also shows its powerful processing power. For the restoration of electronic sound effects and synthesized sounds, the headphones maintain the purity of the audio during processing, just like denoising the image in digital image processing, making the audio signal cleaner and clearer. We also tested the wearing effect outdoors, on the side of the road, and in the subway, and the texture of the music is still charming and high-fidelity, so the TW-EF3A is a multi-purpose earphone that combines music appreciation and life entertainment.
Epilogue:
Built with the TRUE SOUND concept, the Yamaha TW-EF3A demonstrates its comprehensive adaptability and audio reproduction capabilities in a variety of music genres. Whether it's pop music with strong voices, electro-pop with complex arrangements, jazz with instrumental solos, or electronic music with electronic sound effects, the headphones present an accurate and natural sound, demonstrating their all-around performance in different scenarios.