Webinar 21/10/26: From Transducer to Test – Acoustic Engineering for the Manufacturing of Headphones and Earbuds

Designing a modern headphone or earbud requires much more than selecting a transducer with the right frequency response. The acoustic performance experienced by a listener is the result of interactions between the transducer, acoustic volumes and ports, damping elements, mechanical construction, fit and leakage, signal processing, and the listener’s own ear.

This talk will provide an industry perspective on the acoustic engineering of consumer audio products, following the process from fundamental acoustic design and prototyping through laboratory characterization and manufacturing test. We will examine how engineers use acoustic measurements to understand and optimize product performance, while considering the challenges of measurement repeatability, fixture design, unit-to-unit variation, and correlation between development laboratories and production test systems.

Sean Nielsen graduated from the MSc Acoustics programme at Salford in 2022 and is now is an acoustical engineer at Bose, with experiencing spanning transducer design, acoustic system design, and acoustic measurement. At Bose he specializes in consumer audio and acoustic measurement. His work focuses on the development and validation of acoustic test methodologies for manufacturing consumer audio products, including headphones and earbuds, with experience spanning laboratory characterization, test fixture development, measurement-system analysis and manufacturing test.