Patent Application
20140301591
This application claims the priority benefit of Taiwan application serial no. 102112159, filed on Apr. 3, 2013. The entirety of the above-mentioned patent application is hereby incorporated by reference herein and made a part of this specification.
This invention relates to an earphone, and more particularly, to an earphone that improves wearing comfort.
With the rapid progress in technology, all electronic products have been developed towards light, handy, and miniaturized designs. People may use miniaturized electronic products at anytime and anywhere. In order to allow users to listen to the audio information provided by the electronic product without disturbing the other people around, an earphone has became a necessary accessory to the electronic product. Moreover, the earphone also provides listeners better audio transmission, so that the listeners can clearly hear and understand content of the audio information. In contrast to unclear audio transmission through the air, especially when the listeners are moving, for examples, doing exercises, driving, intensely moving around, or being in a noisy environment, the audio transmission of the earphone would still not be affected.
At present, a common earphone available in the market is reducing the size of an output-end of a housing and then putting silicone ear pads on. So the output-end can be placed more deeply into external ears of the users and adapted to the contour of the external ears because of elastic deformations of the silicone ear pads. This earphone uses the silicone ear pads to seal the external ears of the users, which isolates the external sound to enhance the sound quality. However, this earphone has a characteristic of airtight, as the users place the earphone into the external ears, the air between the eardrum and earphone will be compressed and cause the eardrum to receive a strong pressure, which results in a discomfort feeling. At the same time, air pressure causes a vibration film inside the earphone to deform or collapse, which leads to a reduction of sound quality and seriously affects the acoustic comfort.
This invention provides an earphone to solve the earphone's known problems, the wearing discomfort and poor sound quality.
The earphone of this invention includes a housing, a speaker unit, and a gasket. The speaker unit is disposed inside the housing and having a front cover. The gasket is attached between the front cover and the housing. A space inside the housing is divided into a front chamber and a rear chamber by the gasket and the speaker unit together. The front cover has a sound-output opening and a sound-leakage opening. The sound-output opening communicates the front chamber and a space inside the speaker unit. The sound-leakage opening communicates the rear chamber and the space inside the speaker unit.
In an embodiment of this invention, the gasket is a closed ring and surrounding the sound-output opening, and the sound-leakage opening is located outside the gasket.
In an embodiment of this invention, the sound-output opening and the sound-leakage opening are located on the same plane.
In an embodiment of this invention, the sound-output opening and the sound-leakage opening are respectively located on planes of the front cover that are perpendicular to each other.
In an embodiment of this invention, the earphone further includes an acoustic damper disposed on the front cover and covering the sound-leakage opening.
In an embodiment of this invention, the earphone further includes an ear pad, which is assembled outside of the front chamber of the housing.
In an embodiment of this invention, the housing includes an air-leakage opening, which communicates the rear chamber and the external.
In an embodiment of this invention, a gap is kept between a sidewall of the speaker unit and the housing.
In an embodiment of this invention, the speaker unit is a moving-coil speaker unit.
Based on the above, the earphone of this invention uses the gasket between the housing and speaker unit to maintain an air channel, thus it can relieve the uncomfortable feeling and provide the best sound quality as the users wear the earphone.
To make the above features and advantages of this invention more comprehensible, several embodiments accompanied with drawings are described in detail as follows.
Between the front cover 122 of the speaker unit 120 and the housing 110, the presence of the gasket 130 can avoid the front chamber S12 and the rear chamber S14 of the housing 110 isolating from each other by the speaker unit 120. As the earphone 100 in this embodiment is placed into the external ears of the users, the air between the users' eardrum and the speaker unit 120 will orderly flow by the front chamber S12, the sound-output opening P12, the space inside the speaker unit 120, the sound-leakage opening P14, and the rear chamber S14, then finally flow to the external from the rear chamber S14. Hence, the users' eardrum would not feel uncomfortable because air is squeezed. Additionally, also the speaker unit 120 won't be deformed due to the air squeezing and cause sound distortion.
In this embodiment, the sound-output opening P12 and the sound-leakage opening P14 are located on the same plane, i.e. located on the front cover 122 facing towards a front plane of the front chamber S12. In this embodiment, the numbers of the sound-output opening P12 and the sound-leakage opening P14 are four and two respectively as an example, but this invention is not limited the numbers of both. The areas of the sound-output opening P12 and the sound-leakage opening P14 can be adjusted in accordance with the design requirements. Please refer to
The speaker unit 120 in this embodiment is a moving-coil speaker unit, which however should not be constructed as a limitation to this invention. The moving-coil speaker unit is comprised mainly by a speaker vibration system (not shown) and a magnetic loop (not shown). The speaker vibration system, for example, includes a vibration film 124 and a coil 126. The magnetic loop, for example, includes a magnet and a polepiece. When the coil 126 induces the changes in the magnetic field generated because of the changes in electric signal, the magnetic field of the coil 126 interacts with the magnetic field of the magnet which causing the movement of the coil 126; thereby bringing the vibration film to vibrate and then generate sounds. The space inside the speaker unit 120 mentioned above means the space between the front cover 122 and the vibration film 124. The earphone 100 in this embodiment can further include a dust filter 160 disposed on a front-end of the housing 110.
Other embodiments are described to illustrate this invention in the following. It should be noted that the reference numerals and a part of the contents in the previous embodiment are used in the following embodiments, in which identical reference numerals indicate identical or similar components, and repeated description of the same technical contents is omitted. For a detailed description of the omitted parts, reference can be found in the previous embodiment, and no repeated description is contained in the following embodiments.
In conclusion of the above, the earphone of this invention uses the gasket maintaining the air channel between the housing and the speaker unit; therefore, when the users are wearing the earphone, the air between the users' eardrum and the earphone can be leaked through the air channel. Hence, it can provide the users with a comfortable wearing feel and ensure that the speaker unit provided the best sound quality under a normal atmosphere.
Although the this invention has been described with reference to the above embodiments, it will be apparent to one of the ordinary skill in the art that modifications to the described embodiments may be made without departing from the spirit of the invention. Accordingly, the scope of the invention is defined by the attached claims not by the above detailed descriptions.
| Number | Date | Country | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| 102112159 | Apr 2013 | TW | national |
