Introduction to FiiO's Product Line and Update Plan in 2021--From James
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https://www.head-fi.org/threads/int...ne-and-update-plan-in-2021-from-james.959256/)
Chapter 11 UTWS3/5 -TWS Solution with the Best Sound Quality.
There is one rule remaining unchanged for the many years I spent in the audio industry. That is, what drives the development of the product is not the performance, but the user experience. From reel to reel tape recorders, turntables, tape cassette players to CD players, MP3 players and TWS earphones, there is no denying that the sound quality has been improved constantly, but the main change of these products was providing a more comfortable and convenient experience.
When most people tend to listen to music via mobile phones and TWS earphones, the HiFi earphone market was sharply hit, especially for the famous brands such as BOSE, Sennheiser, Beats, and Audio-Technica. From the sales rankings of audio products in some promotion activities in 2020 and 2021 in China, we can see the top brands have become Apple, Huawei, Xiaomi, EDIFIER and other brands that mainly sell TWS earphones.
Therefore, these HiFi earphone brands shall either sit idle, or follow the market trend and meet user needs in order to survive in this giant-dominated TWS market.
The UTWS series was our attempt to adapt to the market. Here is a brief introduction to what determines the sound quality of TWS earphones.
1. Bluetooth codecs
You may be familiar with this point. At present, TWS earphones mainly support Bluetooth codecs including SBC, AAC, aptX, aptX HD, LDAC and LHDC. It is widely considered that aptX HD/LDAC/LHDC have better sound quality. However, limited by the bandwidth of Bluetooth transmission and signal power, the experience of these codecs at high bit rates has yet to be improved. Therefore, the more mature codecs should be aptX and AAC.
2. Digital-Analog conversion and analog amplification
At present, since TWS earphones are restricted by power consumption and size, we usually adopt a single chip, where D/A conversion, analog amplification, Bluetooth reception and decoding are all integrated into one piece.
3. Acoustic design- earphone cavity/unit
At present, TWS earphones have a relatively small size. Even if we use a good earphone driver or even multiple drivers, it would still get much worse performance than that of traditional wired earphones because of their tiny bodies.
The UTWS3 with such a TWS design happened to be the best solution that can solve the above No.2 and No.3 limitations that most TWS earphones have.
In fact, the UTWS3 is meant to separate the circuit part of the TWS earphones and put it inside the earphone unit while adding an independent amp chip. This helped to effectively improve driven capacity, SNR and distortion that have a great impact on sound quality. Users can freely use the UTWS3 with their favorite MMCX or 2-pin earphones, which is totally different from those typical wired earphones in terms of the acoustic part.
Thanks to its feature of retaining the convenience of TWS earphones while having great sound quality similar to traditional wired HiFi earphones, the UTWS3 is warmly adored and praised by consumers once launched.
Of course, both the TWS sound quality and ear hooks are improving as technology develops. In order to further enhance the sound quality, we will introduce the UTWS5 around October, a more powerful TWS ear hook model with better audio performance and more capable Bluetooth functions, which features an independent DAC chip and shares basically the same look and structure as the UTWS3.
Appropriate Usage Scenarios
The usage scenarios of the UTWS3/5 are mainly outdoor scenes. They are suitable for traditional HiFi earphone enthusiasts who want to enhance the experience of their existing wired earphones. In addition, you can turn your idle interchangeable cable earphones into more convenient HiFi TWS earphones.