Bose to Launch New Wireless Earbuds Powered by Qualcomm S5 Audio SoC

At IFA 2022 in Berlin, Qualcomm Technologies and Bose highlighted their continued collaboration during Cristiano Amon’s opening keynote. Bose is integrating Qualcomm wireless voice and music platforms across their portfolio of premium earbuds, headphones, speakers and soundbars. Qualcomm also confirmed that the new Bose QuietComfort Earbuds II, which are scheduled to be unveiled September 7, will be Powered by the new Qualcomm S5 Sound Platform.

If you are an audio industry professional, unless you have been on holiday on some remote island without Internet, you must have noticed that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) finally issued the long-expected rule establishing Over-the-Counter (OTC) hearing aids - five years after the original OTC hearing aid act was signed into law on August 18, 2017. Will hearing aid companies really adjust and understand "consumer" behaviors? How do hearables fit in that environment? Could these products be influenced by "brand loyalty"?

Bose Corporation and Lexie Hearing, a direct-to-consumer hearing aid provider in the United States and 39 other countries, announced a partnership to bring Bose’s self-fitting hearing aid technology to the Lexie Hearing product line. The new Lexie B1 Hearing Aids will be marketed as "Powered by Bose," allowing wearers to fit, program, and control their hearing aids with clinically proven, audiologist-quality results — without a doctor visit, hearing test, or prescription.

This patent analysis looks at an interesting wearable acoustic device, patented by five inventors on behalf of Bose Corp, and which the company would later apply in its Bose SoundWear Companion - the brand's own iteration of an around-the-neck or neckband concept, launched at the end of 2017. With a significant number of claims, the awarded patent describes “a neck loop that is constructed and arranged to be worn around the neck," with drivers located, one each, below the left and right ears of the user, and two acoustically coupled waveguides.

Making Audio Augmentation useful for everyone, or pursue the regulatory requirements of OTC hearing aids. This article offers a useful perspective regarding the guidance documents published by the US Food and Drug Administration regarding improved access to hearing aid technology. The agency proposes a rule to establish a new category of over-the-counter (OTC) hearing aids - to be sold directly to consumers in stores or online without a medical exam or a fitting by an audiologist. But most audio manufacturers are better off by not pursuing this FDA-approved OTC market. Doing so will simply hinder critical experimentation and innovation.

Bose launched its new Smart Soundbar 900, an immersive soundbar design with Dolby Atmos and all-in-one wireless system for music and movies. Custom-engineered with upfiring dipole speakers, the new soundbars works with Bose ADAPTiQ and the Bose Music app for room setup, being able to make it feel like the room is filled with sound from every direction. The Smart Soundbar 900 supports Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, and Bose Voice4Video technology adds voice remote control for a connected TV.

Eventually, even a leading, market reference product needs an update. Bose introduced the new QuietComfort 45 headphones, replacing the legendary QuietComfort 35 II with improved noise cancellation and introducing a new Aware Mode, Bluetooth 5.1, better voice isolation for easier conversations, and 24 hour battery life on a single USB-C charge. The design remains very close to the original.

In this Voice Coil Acoustic Patents article, James Croft discusses an interesting Transmission Line Loudspeaker patent assigned to three engineers from Bose regarding an electro-acoustic driver and acoustic waveguide that includes “an enclosure, an acoustic transmission line formed within the enclosure, and a plurality of acoustic transducers contained within the enclosure and disposed along a length of the acoustic transmission line.” As Croft notes, this seems to be an improvement over the Tapped Horn loudspeaker architecture patented by Tom Danley, assigned 10 years ago. This article was originally published in Voice Coil, June 2015

Bose was the first company to receive an FDA approval for an over-the-counter (OTC) hearing assistance device. The audio industry has been waiting for the actual product announcement. Now, Bose unveiled the SoundControl Hearing Aids, which as the name implies, are actual self-fitting, direct-to-consumer hearing-aids. They can be personalized using a mobile app, but the SoundControl Hearing Aids do not stream music or take calls and they retail for $849.95.

Bose announced the new Bose Sport Open Earbuds — truly wireless earbuds that are optimized for sports, fitness and wellness — with a unique design that the Massachusetts company says, feels like "Nothing In Your Ears, Nothing Covering Them." This new "not in-ear" truly wireless design challenges perceptions, in a crowded space mainly competing to be smaller, smarter, and more discreet. But after the Sleepbuds and the Bose Frames, its seems clear that Bose is not afraid of taking risks.