xMEMS Labs Says Its Tiny Solid-State Cypress Speakers Can Now Deliver Ear-Bashing Bass

Solid-state speaker specialist xMEMS Labs has announced a breakthrough with its Cypress speaker family, using ultrasonic transduction to replace the traditional moving-coil speakers in true wireless stereo (TWS) and active noise cancellation (ANC) headphones — and promises a fortyfold improvement in low frequency response over its existing designs.

"By shifting to a sound from ultrasound principle, the xMEMS Cypress micro speaker can now officially replace traditional coil-and-magnet speakers in active noise canceling earbuds," claims xMEMS Labs' Mike Housholder of the company's latest-generation solid-state silicon speaker family. "Cypress maintains all of the benefits of xMEMS’ existing speakers, while being 40x louder in low frequencies, achieving a key requirement for ANC earbuds."

Traditional speakers are very much not solid-state, relying on a magnetic field to physically move a diaphragm to vibrate the air and create the sound. xMEMS Labs' devices, by contrast, are described by the company as "air pulse generators" — not moving themselves, but creating pressure waves by modulating an incoming audio signal into an amplitude-modulated ultrasonic carrier and demodulated signal to drive cantilevers inside a pressure chamber which is then vented to create the audible sound.

The company claims its approach offers better clarity, follows the source audio signal more closely, provides better spatial imaging accuracy, avoids distortion at the high frequencies, and offers lower weight than traditional speakers. Previous generations, however, have suffered from poor bass response — something Cypress is claimed to address, delivering 40 times more volume at low frequencies than its predecessors, making it suitable for driving noise-cancelling in-ear headphones for the first time.

xMEMS Labs is currently sampling prototype "full-function" Cypress chips to "select early customers," in a compact 6.3×6.5×1.65mm package; the company says it will be ready to sample production-candidate samples with their controller/amplifier chip, Alta, in June next year, with mass production slated for late 2024.

More information is available on the company's website.