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I've noticed something about Bluetooth earbuds that doesn't ever seem to get mentioned: they trap a lot of HEAT in the ear, which I suspect has a lot to do with that feeling of pressure that ambient nose passthrough is said to help relieve. Ambient noise passthrough definitely helps with the noise isolation
effect, but I think that "pressure" people are feeling is HEAT. So. A peltier cooler should do the trick here, as they come as small as 3.5 mm. I'm no sound engineer, but I imagine with a metal earbud body you ought to be able to attach the cooler almost anywhere on the device to draw heat out of the ear canal.
I don't expect these things to have all day battery life, but with the usual sort of charging case to top them off throughout your day, I think most buyers would find it a worthy trade-off.
Note: these are insertable ear BUDS, not over-the-ear headphones.
Eargo
https://shop.eargo.com/eargo-7
Has active noise cancelling but no bluetooth. Maybe a future model will. [a1, Jul 26 2023]
LG Tone wired earbuds
https://a.co/d/0VyiTEA
[21 Quest, Jul 26 2023]
HP Omen
https://www.omen.co...indframe-prime.html
thermoelectric coolers inside the earcups cool down aluminum speaker grille plates, which transfer heat from the acoustic chambers outside and keep the air close to your skin cool [a1, Jul 26 2023]
Bose Patents
https://patents.goo...ent/US10602250B2/en
uses phase change materials [a1, Jul 26 2023]
[link]
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Would simply making the units out of a heat conducting material be good enough? A lot of them use silicone for a nice tight fit that doesn't fall out. I think by default, Silicone is a great insulator, but with additives can be much more thermally conductive. |
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I suspect there's enough heat that gets transmitted through the air trapped in the ear canal to warm a metal earbud through the speaker grille, even if it has a thermally insulating bud tip. |
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Nevermind, I realize I misunderstood your comment. Quite. |
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The tip of the earbud seals your ear and traps heat (and pressure, and sweat). Putting a cooler outside of that may not help. |
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But look at the Eargo line of hearing aids. In canal design but they DON’T block it completely. Someone should make regular ear buds with those kind of ventilated tips. |
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Oh, and “ambient nose passthrough” ? Valsalva? |
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A1, air expands when warm, so trapped heat causes the air trapped in the ear canal to expand, literally increasing internal pressure. If you can turn the earbud into a heatsink and cool the outside end of it, that'll draw heat out and directly reduce the air pressure inside, as well as providing a cooling feeling that I think would be really neat. |
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You know you want lit, weirdly phosphorescent green liquid cooling tubes going into and out of your ear buds like alien steampunk.
It could be a trend like the lit and liquid-cooled computer case fad. |
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Ears and nose, with tiny iridescent flakes so you can see the flow of liquid. |
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I was actually originally thinking of something similar to the LG Tone line of wired Bluetooth earbuds, and that would be absolutely sick! |
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// If you can turn the earbud into a heatsink and cool the outside end of it, that'll draw heat out and directly reduce the air pressure inside // |
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But the part that fits and seals into the ear is usually a pretty good insulator. Typically memory foam or a flexible silicon form. That's why I think Eargo's design is so neat. It fits deeper into the canal and *doesn't* seal it off completely - but can still provide noise canceling. At least that's what their adverts claim. |
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No Power. Passive radiating heat sinks from each ear like fronds from a sea fan. Or a dandelion spray of radiating teeny umbrellas on tiny stalks. [I can't wear buds longer than 10 minutes; they slip, they're hot, and my ears itch after. Maybe cooling is the cure.] |
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Spock radiating ears with the speakers built in. Must have been done by now. |
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A1, there's a big hole right in the middle of those insulated tips though, for the speakers to project sound through. And for over $2000 those hearing aids BETTER work as advertised! |
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As an aside - I looked for prior art and cam across HP's Omen headphones (link). Seems to be the same idea as your but they're cooling the ear cups. |
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So your idea is ... this thing that already exists, but smaller. |
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See also Bose patent (linked). Uses a different approach, phase change materials... |
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A1, neither of those applications are used in a way that relieves pressure inside the ear canal. Over ear headphones don't form an airtight seal so they don't have the same problem with comfort and fit that insertables do. Something else that, admittedly, just occurred to me is that the pressure buildup inside noise cancelling earbuds could have a lot to do with why they're so hard to keep in for long periods of time. The heated air inside is literally pushing them out. |
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And, regardless of whatever marketing claims one company may be making, I don't buy that you can have effective noise cancelling without an airtight seal. |
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// neither relieves pressure inside the ear canal // |
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Eargo (along with every other "open dome" hearing aid tip) already showes how to do that. Has nothing to do with active cooling, which I thought was your point here. |
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My point was to relieve the feeling of pressure by taking steps toward equalizing the inside and outside temperature, while maintaining the seal so there's no degradation in audio quality. If you actually allow outside air in, you're going to sacrifice that audio quality. That may be fine for some manufacturers, like Apple, whose Airpods aren't getting many honorable mentions for sound quality. Apple has a "good enough" approach to quality that goes back to Steve Jobs' personal philosophy. He famously said in an interview that his approach to design is that once you've got something "pretty good" you move onto the next thing instead of obsessing over getting it perfect. That's fine, but I feel it also shows in much of Apple's design which is why I don't buy their products. |
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Those Eargo aids were only #4 on the Forbes top 10 hearing aid list when I looked them up last night. Which is certainly respectable, but not the quality I go for. I want the best. Also, Eargo notably DOES NOT MAKE earbuds. They make hearing aids, exclusively from what I can tell. If their approach worked well for music and movie audio, I can't help thinking more earbud manufacturers would've followed that example by now. |
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In fact, for a hearing AID it actually makes a lot of sense to allow airflow into the ear canal. Hearing aids are designed to amplify outside sounds, after all. If that's what you're trying to do, allowing the actual sound to get into the ear canal to blend with the piped in, amplified sound will likely provide a more natural sounding result. For phonecalls, music, and other media that doesn't originate from external sources, that's not the case. |
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The reason Eargo doesn't offer streaming audio (yet) is because regular Bluetooth audio is too power hungry and basic BT-LE didn't support audio. That was their explanation when I asked a few years ago. Lack of bluetooth streaming was main reason my wife chose a different model of hearing aids back then. |
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But since that time? Battery life of the Eargo 7 is hugely better than the earlier models and BT-LE-audio should soon be mainstream. I do expect Eargo will incorporate streaming on a new model eventually, and other earbud makers will offer similar CIC designs. |
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I'm sure they will incorporate streaming, but until they do we have no way of knowing how their audio quality will compare with earbuds that ONLY DO Bluetooth streaming. It's going to have to pull double duty as a streaming device and sound amplification device. Given how shoddy the ambient sound passthrough currently is on top end earbuds, I'm not so sure the technology is there yet to do both equally well. |
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// shoddy ambient sound passthrough on current top end earbuds // |
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Which ones have you tried? I have Apple Airpod Pro's, 1st gen, and they're pretty good. The 2nd gen is supposed to be even better but I haven't felt a need to upgrade yet. |
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Right... but the audio quality on Airpods is NOT top end, I addressed that already. For what it's worth, video reviews of the 2nd gen ARE much more flattering, but they don't seem to mention how well the transparency mode (I THINK that's the term for the passthrough
feature) works. I've used the latest gen versions of Samsung's Galaxy Buds Pro and Pixel Buds. Pixel Buds don't even seem to have the feature, and the Galaxies all seem to have a white noise-like background hiss. |
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Right, but you didn't answer my question - what are you using, what do you consider top end? |
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(edit - I see you went back and added your reviews, thanks). |
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I was working on that sorry! |
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Even Sony XM-4s, which are over-the-ear headphones that get rave reviews, have that weird background hiss when that feature is enabled. |
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II don't need the pass thruogh to be high fidelity. I just need clear enough ambient sound for situational awareness. I don't know if I'm typical, but that may be why reviews don't give a detailed focus to transparency mode sound quality. You may have some other personal standard though and Apple, Samsung, and others didn't test design with you in mind. |
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Ok, so I've been watching some reviews on the 2nd gen Airpods and their transparency mode actually IS getting rave reviews. Hell... I might actually get some. |
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Oh, please do! I'm tempted myself - not so much for the sound quality, but for changes that made the mode switching more seamless. |
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If you like yours - knowing how fussy you are from your own remarks here - that might tempt me some more |
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The only undecided part for me is, I'm not sure how much functionality I can actually get from them on a Samsung phone. Tracking can be done from the iCloud website, but in terms of other settings.... would I just be stuck on default? |
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To a degree, yeah. Some of the features depend on the Apple ecosystem. |
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