Audio Collaborative 2020: users want the best possible sound from headphones

As part of the Audio Collaborative 2020 conference, organized by Futuresource Consulting, a round table dedicated to the headphone market was held. Experts discussed the unprecedented growth in demand for this category of devices. This is due to the pandemic, the arrangement of home offices, the development of the gaming industry and technologies such as active noise cancellation.

The conference participants noted that now headphones are not a universal solution, and many users prefer to have a separate device for each task: “There are quite obvious differences between different use cases, and, accordingly, there is a difference in what task the product is focused on,” said Chris Havell, Director of Marketing for Voice and Music Products at Qualcomm. “We have different requirements for working conditions, sports and entertainment”.

But at the same time, with the increase in the market, users began to pay more attention to the sound quality, and they quickly get used to premium sound. “Sound quality is a universal requirement,” said Stuart George, managing director of Cambridge Audio. “First of all, the listening process and the ability to listen to music in the best quality are important.”

According to Bernice Cramer, director of management and global marketing at Bose, headphones have become a kind of “interface with the world” during the pandemic – and the quality of the microphone also needs to be paid attention, especially the various algorithms that allow you to distinguish and improve the voices of interlocutors … “The most reliable marker that a person decides to buy premium headphones is that they already have premium headphones”, added Kramer.