Patent Application
20110007929
Headphones are used to play audio for users of electronic devices with media playback capabilities. For example, a pair of headphones may be used to play music for a user of a media player or may handle audio for a cellular telephone user.
Traditional headphones have relatively large ear cups. More recently, smaller headphones known as earbuds have been developed. In some earbud-style headphones, a small plastic earpiece rests in the outer ear canal of the user. Other earbuds have elastomeric earpieces that fit snuggly within a user's ear canal.
Earbuds are used in a variety of environments. For example, earbuds may be plugged into computers or other electronic equipment that is powered from a wall outlet. Earbuds are also used in static-filled environments such as airplanes. Earbuds are sometimes handled roughly, so durability is a concern.
These possible operating environments impose constraints on earbud designers. For example, a durable earbud that is formed from metal parts may be susceptible to electrostatic discharge. Electrostatic charge develops on a user in the course of a user's normal activities. As static electricity builds up on a user's ear, an electrostatic potential can develop across insulating portions of an earbud such as an elastomeric earpiece. If the amount of charge that develops is large enough, an electrostatic discharge event will occur. During the electrostatic discharge event, charge buildup will be released as charge flows across the insulating portions of the earbud. This may produce a spark that is felt by the user or may produce an audible crackle as the charge interacts with the speaker driver in the earbud.
Sparks and audible interference can be unpleasant for users. Although some of these effects can be mitigated by forming earbuds entirely from plastic, conventional all-plastic earbud designs tend not to be aesthetically appealing and may not be sufficiently durable to withstand rough handling. Some conventional earbuds address the effects of electrostatic discharge events by shorting their positive audio lines to metal driver parts in the earbuds. This approach may not be optimal when the earbuds are used with wall-powered equipment, because the positive audio line could potentially become shorted to a live power supply line if the wall-powered equipment were to develop an electrical fault.
It would therefore be desirable to be able to provide earbuds that are able to safely mitigate the effects of electrostatic discharge events.
Earbuds may be prone to electrostatic discharge events. During an electrostatic discharge event, static charge that is accumulated on a conductive earbud housing or other conductive structure may discharge to a part of the human body (e.g., a user's ear). To avoid undesirable electrostatic discharge events, earbuds may be provided with electrostatic discharge paths.
An earbud may contain a metal speaker driver housing in which a speaker driver is mounted. The earbud may also have a printed circuit board on which electrical components such as speaker crossover circuits for the speaker driver are mounted. The crossover circuits may be used to route audio signals to low-frequency and high-frequency speakers in the metal speaker driver housing.
A pair of earbuds may have an audio plug and associated cable. Signal lines and a ground line in the cable may be used to connect the audio plug to each earbud. In each earbud, the ground line may be connected to ground traces on the printed circuit board to which the crossover elements are mounted. A conductive epoxy may be used to electrically short the ground trace on the printed circuit board to the metal speaker driver housing.
The electrostatic discharge path in each earbud may be formed from an elastomer or other material interposed between the conductive earbud housing and the metal speaker driver housing and ground trace. The elastomer or other electrostatic discharge material may have a resistance that is sufficiently high to avoid undesirable leakage currents but that is sufficiently low to allow electrostatic charge from the conductive earbud housing to discharge to ground.
Further features of the invention, its nature and various advantages will be more apparent from the accompanying drawings and the following detailed description of the preferred embodiments.
Media players and electronic devices such as cellular telephones, computers, and other electronic equipment may be used to play media content and present other audio content to a user. Some electronic devices have no internal audio playback capabilities, but can play back audio through an attached set of headphones. Other electronic devices are provided with internal speakers, but still contain audio jacks into which headphones can be plugged when it is desired to use headphones in place of the internal speakers.
Many popular headphones use earbud-style earpieces. Earbuds are more compact than traditional over-the-ear headsets and, particularly when provided with elastomeric in-ear earpieces, can help provide sound isolation.
Some conventional earbuds are formed almost entirely of insulating materials such as plastic. These devices tend to resist electrostatic discharge, but can be unsightly and fragile.
Other conventional earbuds may include durable metal parts over which soft elastomeric earpieces are formed, but are subject to electrostatic discharge events or use sub-optimal connections for their signals lines.
A set of earbud headphones having a design that helps to mitigate electrostatic discharge effects is shown in
Audio plug 16 and mating audio jack 20 can be provided in a variety of form factors. For example, audio jacks and plugs can have different sizes (e.g., ¼″, ⅛″ or 3.5 mm, etc.). Audio jacks and plugs can also have different numbers of contacts. For example, audio connectors such as these may have two contacts for audio and ground or may have three contacts to support left and right stereo audio signals and ground. Some audio connector arrangements use four or more audio connectors. For example, a four-contact connector may have left and right audio contacts, a microphone contact, and a ground contact.
A typical three-pin audio connector has a tip contact, a ring contact, and a sleeve contact and is therefore sometimes referred to as a tip-ring-sleeve (TRS). A four-pin audio connectors may have a tip, two rings, and a sleeve. Four-pin audio connectors are therefore sometimes referred to as tip-ring-ring-sleeve (TRRS) connectors. These audio connector arrangements or other suitable audio connector arrangements may be used in headphones 10 if desired.
Device 18 may be a media player, a cellular telephone player with media player capabilities, a portable electronic device such as a computer, a smaller portable electronic device such as a pendant or wrist device, or any other suitable electronic device.
The functions of device 18 may be implemented using storage and processing circuitry. Storage in the storage and processing circuitry may include volatile and non-volatile memory and may be provided using stand-alone memory chips, memory that is incorporated into a processor, application-specific integrated circuit, or other component, solid state memory devices, hard drives, or other suitable storage components. Processing circuitry in the storage and processing circuitry may be implemented using one or more processors. Examples of integrated circuits that may be used in providing processing capabilities for device 10 include microprocessors, microcontrollers, digital signal processors, audio and video chips (codecs), application-specific integrated circuits, communications circuits, etc.
Cable 12 may include two, three, four, or more than four conductive wires. Cables with fewer wires may only be able to support monaural audio. Cables with more wires may be able to support more advance functions, such as stereo audio, microphone signals for voice calls, and data signals (e.g., for user input from a user input device or for user output for a status indicator). Cable 12 in the example of
Earbuds 14 contain speaker drivers. Each earbud 14 may contain a single driver or each earbud may contain two or more driver elements. For example, high-quality audio may be played back for a user with a two-speaker arrangement. In a typical two-speaker arrangement, each earbud 14 may contain a woofer driver for reproducing low frequencies and a tweeter driver for reproducing high frequencies. Other arrangements may be used if desired (e.g., with midrange drivers, subwoofers, etc.).
Earbuds 14 may be constructed from conductive materials such as metal (including elemental metals and metal alloys) and from insulating structures such as plastic and elastomeric substances. In earbuds that fit in the outer portions of a user's ear, it may be acceptable to use rigid polymers such as acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), polycarbonate (PC), or PC/ABS blends or other relatively hard materials to form earbud structures. In earbuds that fit within the ear canal of a user (sometimes referred to as in-canal or in-ear earbuds), it may be desirable to form the part of the earbud that contacts the user's ear from a soft elastomer such as foam or silicone.
To ensure sufficient durability and to enhance aesthetics, it may be desirable to form at least part of earbuds 14 from a conductor such as metal. For clarity, earbud arrangements in which part of the earbud is formed from metal and part of the earbud is formed from an insulator such as a soft elastomer or rigid plastic are described herein as examples. In the example of
A partly schematic cross-sectional side view of one of earbuds 14 is shown in
Lines 24 and 22 may be routed to corresponding positive speaker driver terminal 30 and ground speaker driver terminal 28 on speaker driver 26. Speaker driver 26 may contain one or more speakers that produce sound for earbud 14.
Portion 14A of earbud 14 may be formed of metal. Portion 14B may be formed of an insulator such as an elastomer or a rigid plastic. Because portion 14B is often formed from elastomeric materials, portion 14B of earbud 14 is sometimes referred to herein as elastomeric ear-canal structure 14B.
Structure 14B has openings to allow sound to escape from the interior of earbud 14. In particular, structure 14B has an interior channel 46 that terminates in exterior opening 42. Interior channel 46 may be a hollow cylinder and exterior opening 42 may be a circular hole (as examples).
Electrostatic charge can build up on earbud 14 during use. For example, in the absence of a suitable electrostatic discharge path, portion 14A might become charged when contacted by a user's ear.
To prevent excessive amounts of electrostatic charge from developing and thereby prevent electrostatic discharge events, headphones 10 may be provided with a controlled electrostatic discharge path. The discharge path may be formed within portions of the headphones such as cable 12 and plug 16 or, more preferably, as part of earbud 14. With one suitable arrangement, which is sometimes described herein as an example, earbud 14 may be provided with structures that form a resistive discharge path between metal portion 14A and a suitable discharging structure such as ground line 22.
In the example of
With one suitable arrangement, material 36 may be implemented in the form of a ring-shaped boot member that circumferentially surrounds driver 26. Boot member 36 may have a conductivity of about 2*10−5 to 4*10−7 (Q-m)−1. In an earbud having dimensions of about 1 mm to about 1 cm, boot member 36 may have a resistance of about 500 kΩ to 10 MΩ (e.g., less than 30 MΩ, between 30 MΩ and 10 MΩ, between 40 MΩ and 300 kΩ, between 30 MΩ and 1 MΩ, less than 20 MΩ, less than 10 MΩ, less than 1 MΩ, etc.) The resistance of boot member 36 is preferably low enough to bleed off electrostatic charge while being high enough to prevent undesirable leakage currents from developing. Material 36 is somewhat conductive, so whenever electrostatic charge develops on metal structure 14A, this charge will be discharged through member 36.
As shown in
If desired, other types of electrostatic discharge path may be formed between housing 14A and ground line 22. For example, as shown in
Electrostatic discharge events may be associated with relatively large voltages. For example, voltages may build up to 5 kV or 10 kV or more. To ensure that resistor 50 is able to withstand these relatively large voltages without damage, resistor 50 may be implemented using a high-voltage design (e.g., a thin-film resistor that is formed from a durable material such as ruthenium oxide and that has a shape that helps prevent voltages from jumping across the resistor housing). More than one resistor 50 may be connected between metal housing 14A and driver body 32 in parallel if desired. Multiple series-connected resistors 50 may also be used. Arrangements with parallel and series-connected discrete high-voltage resistors may be used instead of distributed resistance material 36 or may be used in the same earbud as material 36.
In the illustrative configuration of
A cross-sectional side view of another illustrative earbud 14 with an internal electrostatic discharge path is shown in
Conductive epoxy 34 (
To prevent particle intrusion into the interior of driver body 32, which could damage the speakers of driver body 32, one or more screens may be provided in earbud 14. These screens may be, for example, polymer screens, metal screens, screens formed from combinations of polymer and metal parts, etc. In the example of
If desired, earbud structure 14B may be used to discharge electrostatic charge (e.g., to ground line 22). An earbud structure of this type may be formed from a conductive (non-insulating) material and may exhibit a resistance of about 10-30 MΩ. A conductive (resistive) earbud structure of this type may be used in the same earbud 14 as conductive rubber boot 36 or may be used in an earbud without any other internal electrostatic discharge paths. Conductive (resistive) discharge paths may also be formed in cable 12 (e.g., by forming some or all of the jacket in cable 12 from a material that has a non-zero conductivity and by shorting the jacket to ground 22 or other suitable discharge path).
A cross-sectional view of earbud 14 in the vicinity of printed circuit board 62 is shown in
There may be two or more speaker driver modules in earbud 14. In the example of
Arrangements of the type shown in
If desired, other structures may be used to receive electrostatic discharge current through boot member 36. For example, a metal screen (e.g., a stainless steel mesh such as screen 70 of
The foregoing is merely illustrative of the principles of this invention and various modifications can be made by those skilled in the art without departing from the scope and spirit of the invention.
