With the continuous development of audio technology, open-back OWS headphones, as an emerging category in the headphone market, are showing strong growth momentum. According to statistics, the sales volume of China's open-back headset market will reach 6.52 million units in 2023, a surge of 130.2% from 2022; It is expected that the open-frame headset market will continue to maintain strong growth in 2024, and is expected to become a new engine and opportunity segment for the growth of Bluetooth headsets in the future.
In the face of this growing blue ocean market, Wuqi launched the underlying solution for OWS market applications as early as the end of 2022, and officially released the highly integrated main control chip platform WQ703X in 2023, completing the construction of software and hardware capabilities from a single application to multi-scene coverage, with a mature audio algorithm solution with a high degree of customizability and scalability. For the current pain points of OWS headphones, such as poor sound quality, weak noise reduction and suppression ability, and short battery life, Wuqi WQ703X chip platform provides a new technical improvement and optimization scheme.
Pain point 1: OWS low-frequency leakage affects the listening experience. Compared with traditional in-ear TWS earphones, open-back earphones leak more in the low-frequency part; Especially when the volume is reduced, the gain in the low-frequency part is greatly reduced. The dynamic EQ algorithm provided by the Wuqi WQ703X platform can maintain the output gain of the low-frequency part unchanged, and has a DSP smoothing function, which can eliminate the POP sound when the EQ is switched frequently.
Of course, due to form limitations, the sound quality of open-back headphones is still not fully comparable to that of in-ear headphones, even if the low-frequency output is fully loaded. The virtual bass algorithm carefully developed by the Wuqi WQ703X platform for OWS headphones can bring a more excellent low-frequency listening experience to the headphones under limited output combined with psychoacoustic theory.
Pain point 2: OWS has weak ability to suppress call echo and wind noise. Compared with in-ear headphones, the MIC-SPK spacing of open-earphones is short, the sound isolation is weak, the signal-response ratio is low, and the call echo double talk effect is poor. The Wuqi WQ703X platform is based on advanced recurrent neural network and convolutional neural network, which has been trained on a large amount of data, is not limited to noise types, and is suitable for many complex call scenarios. Its innovative LMS+KLM dual filtering structure can increase the linear echo suppression ability by 30dB, and the concurrent nonlinear residual echo is introduced into AI processing, making the entire OWS single and double talk call extremely clear.
In addition, OWS headsets still have problems such as wind noise residue, large voice damage, and low call intelligibility when calling. Based on this, the multi-microphone technology + neural network algorithm provided by the Wuqi WQ703X platform trains the AI model through a large amount of wind noise data, and protects the voice based on the human ear hearing mechanism, which can greatly achieve the effects of less wind noise residue, stable speech, less damage, and high intelligibility.
Pain point 3: OWS consumes a lot of power and has a short battery life. Due to its delicate and compact design, open-back headphones can only use a smaller battery capacity, and open-back headphones require larger audio energy output and more enhancement algorithm loading, which will greatly affect the battery life, so it is often difficult to meet users' expectations in terms of battery life. Wuqi WQ703X platform adopts the industry's original low-power consumption + RISC-V architecture + DSP design, its own algorithm occupies less computing power, and the power consumption of the whole machine with music load is only 4mA, which can greatly improve the overall battery life of OWS headphones.
It is precisely with its excellent innovative architecture design and highly integrated audio algorithm solution that the Wuqi WQ703X chip platform has continuously enabled the innovative applications of more than ten open-frame OWS headphones, and successfully solved many pain points in sound quality, noise reduction, battery life and other aspects of OWS headphones. The following focuses on four of the OWS headphones using the Wuqi chip platform, and feel the beauty of innovation in the new form.
As a groundbreaking OWS earphone, the HUAWEI FreeClip ear clip earphone adopts a minimalist aesthetic design and an innovative C-bridge structure, which has a stylish and elegant appearance and is comfortable and lightweight to wear. It is equipped with a 10.8mm dual-magnetic high-sensitivity unit, which has a long battery life of 8 hours at a time, and with the blessing of a number of acoustic technologies and audio algorithm solutions, it can bring users the ultimate excellent music and high-quality call experience.
At the same time, the 16.2mm large dynamic design and many high-end audio algorithms help to achieve a perfect combination of comfortable wearing and surging hearing, bringing a leap in music listening quality.
GLIDiC is a well-known audio brand under the Japanese SoftBank Group, GLIDiC Hear Free adopts an open earhook form design, small and exquisite, the soft earhook naturally fits the curve of the ear, with the blessing of multiple audio algorithms and large driver units, it can be comfortably worn and enjoy a high-quality sound experience in a variety of scenarios, the music is natural and rich, and the call is clear and safe.
Peat SoundPEATS GoFree2 breaks through the upper limit of the open-back headphone industry and has the authoritative certification of Hi-Res, a high-quality audio standard. The innovative U-shaped acoustic cavity structure and 16.2mm ultra-large dynamic unit design, with the ultimate empowerment of AI noise reduction and low-frequency algorithms, take into account the comfort of open-back headphones and in-ear sound quality, and enjoy high-definition calls and music without being experienced by the outside world.
In the deep development and evolution of TWS earphones, the OWS earphone market is currently in the rising stage of rapid development, Wuqi is the industry's earliest main control chip manufacturer in this market, through continuous innovation and optimization, and gradually occupies a place in the market, in the future, Wuqi will actively promote Bluetooth audio technology innovation, and explore the main control chip in the field of Bluetooth audio to achieve a wider range of applications.