Robert Triggs / Android Authority
Today’s best Bluetooth headphones and earphones sound great and are packed with features, so it’s often hard to go wrong when making a purchase. Portable audio is, in many ways, a solved problem. However, headphones are comparatively “dumb” products next to your smartphone or new smartwatch, bound by manufacturer preloaded features and limited customization options in proprietary apps. Wouldn’t headphones be more powerful and useful if you could install new features on demand and even bring your favorites from an old pair to your new ones?
It’s the brainchild of Sonical’s Cosmos, a thin operating system designed for headphones, earphones and other hearing wearables. We sat down with Sonic Solutions Architect Gary Spittle and Johnny McClintock (formerly of aptX) at IFA 2022 to find out more about what’s coming with the newly named Headphone 3.0 Paradigm.
How do you view an OS without a screen?
Zarif Ali / Android Authority
When you think of an operating system, your mind probably goes to Android, iOS, Windows, or some other. Thanks to unique GUIs and design languages, it’s easy to imagine what they might look like, but imagining an operating system without a screen is more difficult. However, what makes these systems useful is what they allow users and producers to do; Whether it’s simply installing apps, upgrading to an amazing new processor, or innovating with flexible displays, the operating system is the glue that holds it all together, ensuring a consistent experience from product to product.
The current headphone space never works like this. There is no unified platform or operating system, which means features vary widely between manufacturers’ product lineups. Big fan of Sony’s LDAC codec? Sorry, you can’t get that on your AirPods Pro. Would you like to quickly pair with Pixel Buds Pro? You won’t find that on any other brand. Even worse, headphone users are still completely driven by the manufacturers, who spend years figuring out what they want, developing said feature, and hoping the product is still useful when it comes to market. It’s a slow and outdated process — even TVs have moved to embrace user-driven, app-based experiences.
A hearable operating system opens the door to user-driven rather than manufacturing-driven experiences, like smartphones.
In short, Cosmos is designed to free consumers from the shackles of manufacturer orders, giving them the power to run the features and applications they love on their headphones and other hearing devices. But the use cases go beyond moving conventional audio features from phones to headphones. Sonical covers fitness and security, gaming, hearing and industrial applications, all falling under the umbrella.
Case in point, Sonical recently announced a partnership with Segotia to bring neural sensing consumer and medical applications to the platform. We also discussed at length other novel use cases of the headphones, such as in-ear heart rate, temperature and alertness, for augmenting and enhancing sound for the hearing impaired and hearing impaired patients. A very important thing. Headphone 3.0 if you want.
It’s more than just music, future headphones can enhance your fitness, gaming, medical and other needs.
Sonical wouldn’t be the first company to want to put OS into your headphones. Braggy OS launched this way in 2015 and in 2021 it partnered with Skullcandy and Klipsch to offer familiar features like head gestures and hands-free volume control. That said, there are some very noticeable differences between Bragi OS and CosmoOS when it comes to ambition and implementation.
(augmented) reality
Robert Triggs / Android Authority
Part of the problem with making smart headphones more modern is that they aren’t built to do anything with what we might call traditional apps. Their tiny, energy-efficient processors run numerical crunching algorithms — like decoding Bluetooth codecs, picking up wake words and applying basic noise cancellation — quickly and efficiently, but they can’t (mostly) do more general-purpose or machine-learning-based computing. Required to define use cases for next-gen. Even for seemingly smart things like voice assistants, they still rely on a connected smartphone.
For example, Gary has tirelessly described to us the challenges of transitioning from today’s basic catch-all noise cancellation technologies to nearby chatter. For that, you need machine learning that can differentiate about your environment. Alternatively, maybe your favorite music app records heart rate readings from your ears to provide you with a legitimately relaxing personal chill playlist instead of the same generic list that everyone else is listening to. These are far more complex problems than today’s headsets address and require more advanced silicon to realize.
Read more: The best true wireless headphones you can buy
Sonical is taking care of half of that, designing its own chipsets specifically built to handle CosmOS, audible apps, essential DSP tasks, and advanced machine learning, all without breaking the very limited power budget of modern headphones. That’s no mean feat, and Garry admits that maximizing CosmoOS’ capabilities will require silicon advances similar to those we’ve seen in mobile over the past decade. But if Apple is using the H1 chipset to deliver “computational noise,” it’s clear that the basis of the concept could be implemented today.
Headphones aren’t equipped to run apps and AI, but new processors could change that.
Conveniently, custom silicon sidesteps the issue of trying to support the myriad of third-party chipsets on the market – an almost impossible task given the varying capabilities of silicon in use today. But that also offers an opportunity to simplify Sonic Cosmos, making it accessible to developers by offering a consistent set of features and robust APIs that eliminate the need to fully understand the underlying silicon. Typically, programming for Bluetooth chipsets is too low for “metal,” as some would say. It’s efficient but doesn’t do well with adding and removing applications at will. By introducing an acceptable thin operating system, complete with a hardware abstraction layer, Cosmos takes a more plug-and-play approach to software, making development feel like a modern application.
The downside is that Cosmos doesn’t work on anything and everything; It requires both silicon and software partners to come forward. While some players will no doubt be keen to embrace the freedom offered here, others may be more protective of the tight knit and lucrative proprietary ecosystem. As Johnny put it; It’s time to blow the doors off.
What is a killer app?
Robert Triggs / Android Authority
Sacrificing the safety of our favorite playlists to try something new and avant-garde is a hard habit to break, and perhaps the biggest challenge Cosmos faces as a breakthrough concept. Some may feel that this is a solution that begs for trouble, and like most new ideas, judgment can only be based on the arrival of a “killer app.” Critically, Cosmos isn’t pinning its hopes on a single breakthrough idea, but that may be for the best in the long run.
Despite his lofty ambitions, Sonic isn’t interested in artificially steering the stage in any direction. It is only providing oars that allow third parties to navigate the murky waters of consumer demand. Google took a similar approach with Android, and we’d say that led to faster innovation from both product and app vendors than Apple’s walled garden. Rather than trying to predict future consumer needs with a single killer app, CosmOS could represent a similar paradigm-shift to the transition of phones to touchscreen OSes. Before the change it was difficult to imagine the scope of the implications, but now it is impossible to think of going back to the old ways.
Everyone once loved mobile phones but now cannot imagine living without apps and touchscreens. Can headphones make a similar paradigm shift?
As such, there are several ways partners can choose to implement CosmoS even on-premises. One option is to stay close to the current phone-headset model by using plugins drawn from various existing apps to enhance and enhance today’s experience. These plugins might include your favorite music streaming app, health tracker or hearing software. The main difference is that they are not only tied to features pre-installed by the manufacturer.
The more impressive long-term vision Gary and Johnny outlined was a completely untethered experience where a wireless headphone charger would act as a communications hub, streaming content over Wi-Fi or 5G and bypassing Bluetooth or ultra-wideband connectivity to the headset itself. and any other connected device. In this case, whether you’re on the go, connected to a laptop for a video call, or sitting down for a gaming session, headphones are a standout product with their apps and features. Perhaps we have seen the first tentative steps in this direction with the JBL Tour Pro 2 and the touchscreen charger?
watch out: Turn that old iPod wireless with these smart headphones
It sounds revolutionary in theory, but the proof of all these great ideas will be in real products. Sonical has been working on Cosmos for several years and has reached the prototype stage of development. Headphone partners are in the works, and we’re expecting to hear more about the platform when CES 2023 arrives. Wait for us.