What Would You Ask a Liberty Series Product Manager?

[Duane_Lester]

I personally do not care either way with the NC. I know some wanted it. I kinda like the concept of a series of earbuds not having NC and working on sound quality.

I think higher end earbuds will be about ldac, anc, and sound quality as their center piece. I think they can do a bunch of options now as technology increase.

I will say I like the lost earbud feature and as I was thinking about that this thought came in my head. How about earbuds that can charge without the case? The could have a QI in the flat parts of say the air 2 pro that allows charging without getting the case.

[The_Professor]

ANC only worsens sound quality when activated, but adds cost so if you don’t need it don’t buy it.

The issue specific to the L2P is it’s already a deep stack of hardware, the dual drivers. To add ANC to it forces tough decisions.

While Soundcore doesn’t share roadmaps, we have history from which to logically extrapolate.

The addition of ANC to the LA2 with the LA2P, the addition of ANC to the P2 with the P3, makes for an obvious ANC L2P.

But also, Soundcore rarely seems to retire any product, so it’s also logical to extrapolate the AptX L2P, the LDAC Ambient L2P+ to be still available after the (guessed) ANC L2P we codename “L3P”.

The lost earbuds feature I don’t see as needing hardware support, it’s just making a sound based on app trigger so I don’t see any reason for it not be in all products going forward. As I can’t use TWS as they fall out too easily, I don’t suffer the lost bud problem but I do use the Android find me feature from my watch to find my phone so have empathy with the TWS lost bud feature.

Wonder if they could add the find me feature to the case???

[Chiquinho]

Wonder if they could add the find me feature to the case???

There is help!

[Unnamed]

What is the most challenging part about designing any type of earbud or is one style more difficult then the other to make work well?

[ktkundy]

My favorite of the liberty series is the liberty 2 pro

some questions I have:

1. If science wasn’t a limitation what would your dream headphones/earbud be (no limitations here let your imagination go wild)
2. When designing with grammy award winners like you did with two products in the liberty line up do you bring them in once you have the product or is it more of a cohesive they are there from day one working with the team to try to make the best product.
3. How do you decide how far to innovate without risking reliability and compromising quality. For example, where is the line drawn to stop you from trying to pack in all the features you can.
4. Has soundcore considered ear tips that would custom mold to each user’s ears. I saw this in one type of earbuds once where the earbud tips basically molded to the user’s ear to create a better seal and reduce noise leakage and provide better noise isolation.
5. If you had to think of one word for what soundcore stands for what would it be? what about one word for what the liberty series stands for?

[element321]

I find myself not using the ANC feature on my earbuds that often. I think I mostly use it when pushing the lawn mower or using my smaller riding lawn mower when I can’t hear anything unless the ANC is on. Any other time I want to hear what’s going on around me. I had ANC on the other day while working in the yard and turn around to see my neighbor’s great pyrenes looking giving me the look that you don’t want to see in a working dog’s eye when you get to close to their heard. Fortunately, he was there to play not fight.

I think a good fitting pair of over the ear headphones should block out plenty of outside sounds. My Q35s do a good job and I almost never use ANC. I mostly use the Q35 when on my big riding mower and tractor when I need to block more noise but always need noise protection.

I do miss the Slim and the old Spirit X style of earbuds. If Soundcore were to spend the time to release a new set I’d love to see them work with the app and even have the find my earbud features. I miss placed a set of these in the past and found them a few weeks later by accident.

[The_Professor]

Logically I see all new products having ANC, because a consumer when given choice of a product with ANC vs not having, if the cost difference is small then a “why not” conclusion is formed. Because Soundcore doesn’t retire products for years, you’d see a lower cost earlier non-ANC version.

ANC is a sibling of Ambient because Ambient sends the sound in-phase while ANC is out-of-phase.

Doing it well is expensive but you can cheaply filter out lower frequencies. If you imagine a triangle formed by the ear canal to the ear drum, a low frequency sound has the width of the ear canal becomes relatively smaller so the sound coming from front/back has a relatively small difference in phase, hence a small relative error regardless of sound direction. The error produces a “beat” which is the hiss of ANC. The more microphones the smaller the errors, less hiss. So I see future products having 3 or more mics each side to reduce the hiss.

So the argument drives the technology. You need a good seal to make the sound generated by the drivers to be the only sound, and stops leakage so others don’t suffer your choice of music. That then drives a market for ambient, which can pipe in-phase sound. Then its a little more challenging to then be ANC out-of-phase.

I then see an inevitable intelligence added to flip between normal, ambient, ANC based on user settings. For example you can teach it your name so it flips to Ambient when someone says your name, or if a sound is coming towards you then Ambient comes in. An approaching sound becomes relatively higher pitch and the delta between left/right grows, so an incoming sound can be inferred as it gets nearer. You’d then have Ambient enabled if a car was approaching.

Once that technology exists and becomes a “why not” cost difference, probably 5 years from now, then the buds not having this will become banned, illegal due to safety issues particularly where medical services are funded through taxation (e.g. Europe).

So what I have seen from Soundcore, and expect to see in the future, is to initially focus on sound quality, then add ambient, then add ANC, then add intelligent switching normal/Ambient/ANC. As the L2P was focused on sound, the L2P+ added ambient, logically there has to be a “L3P” which adds ANC and then a “L4P” 1-2 years later where the normal/Ambient/ANC switches intelligently.

My needs have been ignored so far, and it’s my fault if I don’t ask, and then Soundcore’s fault if they ignore me. So what I want is the Slim wired buds design, with ambient and ANC added. 2 weeks ago I was backpacking B&B, walking, bus, train. I’d like ANC for the B&B for neutralising the sound of the drunks coming in at 1am. I am backpack camping later and I’d like to block wind and nature sounds. No way would I use any TWS I’d easily lose something in the tent or walking, I’d only use the Slim wired buds and want an Ambient ANC future version to exist.