“Can you hear the music？”
In the recently released movie "Oppenheimer", Bohr raised such a question to Oppenheimer. He said: "Algebra is like music. The point is not whether you can understand the music. It is whether you can hear the music. So, can you hear the music?"
Oppenheimer said forcefully: "Yes, I can."
Music is a mysterious thing. Just as the basic component of matter is atoms, the basic component of music is mechanical waves. The duration, intensity, tonality, timbre and other factors of the sound waves constitute the melody. But above the basic level, music also includes rhythm, melody, harmony, dynamics, mode, form, texture, etc., and the upper level also includes skills, emotions, musical thoughts and more.
Faced with such complex music, we don’t have to break it down bit by bit to understand it. But there’s one very important thing we all need to do – hear it.
But can we really hear the music?
In our daily lives, we are far away from musical instruments, singers and stages, and can only perceive music through digital signals. This results in that most of the time people can only try their best to understand the music, but cannot really hear the music. The key to solving this problem is the combination of technology and aesthetics.
On November 23, the Huawei Audio Innovation Technology (2023) media communication meeting was held at the Opera Concert Hall of the Central Conservatory of Music. Liu Dongfang, President of Huawei Terminal BG Audio and Smart Accessories Product Line, shared the full-link self-developed innovative technological achievements behind Huawei FreeBuds Pro 3. Subsequently, the Chamber Music Orchestra of the Central Conservatory of Music performed the "Listen to the Original Sound" concert for the guests and brought the first movement of "Winter".
The origin of this event was that Huawei teamed up with the chief tuning group of the Central Conservatory of Music to conduct commissioning for FreeBuds Pro 3. In this combination, Huawei brings its technological capabilities for lossless sound quality, while six musicians from the Central Conservatory of Music contribute their interpretation and understanding of music aesthetics.
The combination of technology and aesthetics, corresponding to our life of experiencing music in headphones, may be able to answer the riddle of "how to hear music".
The answer is, as Oppenheimer said, "Yes, I can."
Can you hear the music？
In these fleeting days, when we are on the subway, in the terminal, or in an office building, we can only occasionally connect to music through headphones.
But in this case, we often only hear the tone and lyrics. The interludes of musical instruments, the emotional conflicts in rising and falling tones, the collision between music theory and musical ideas. These things are very delicate, but difficult to represent in digital signals.
So after get off work and school, we read a lot of popular science articles about music and watched a lot of videos that "take you through classical music in a few minutes." We are familiar with musicians and talk about music theory knowledge. But can we really hear the music?
I have such a story myself. When I was a child, I read an article introducing Mahler, and I was very interested in it, so I found Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 in C-sharp minor to listen to. However, the combination of computer + headphones only brought me an obscure melody, which made me dizzy. Feeling sleepy but also confused.
Years later, when I was convinced that Mahler was nothing more than this, I had the opportunity to listen to a live performance. It is surprising to find that this piece is full of confrontations and contradictions between different instruments. Sadness and joy, depression and excitement, despair and hope, these opposites are released through the coexistence of different instruments, allowing the whole work to show an unusual beauty in an ordinary melody.
These distinctive instrumental expressions cannot be heard at all through headphones. This means that I am trying to understand the music with some knowledge, but in fact I am not hearing the music at all.
This is the frustrating truth about audio transmission technology: it is an incredibly complex barrel effect.
From the sound source to the ear, audio transmission needs to go through collection, filtering, compression, transmission, playback and other links, involving different technical fields such as chips, networks, acoustic structures, software codecs, etc. Although on the streaming media platform, we can see that there is a paid "lossless sound quality" option, it is not enough that the sound source is lossless. The music will still be damaged during subsequent transmission and playback. If there is a problem in any link or technology, the final performance of the sound will be affected and the real effect will be lost, resulting in a dull sound like what I encountered when I first listened to Mahler.
Especially when we are accustomed to using TWS headphones to perceive music, the wireless design and narrow hardware structure of the headphones will lead to network instability, limited component design and other problems. It can be said that the pursuit of sound quality and even original sound restoration in TWS products is to pursue the possibility in the impossible.
We burn headphones, we install a bunch of sound enhancement software, and some music lovers even joke that they want to "consecrate" the headphones. These efforts are all aimed at enhancing some sound quality, so that it is possible to get closer to "hearing music".
So, in TWS headphones, in the busy modern life, is it an unsolvable problem to really hear music?
Huawei and the musicians from the Central Conservatory of Music don’t think so. After many discussions, both Huawei and CCTV agreed that headphones are just a bridge between listeners and performers. It doesn't need to be over-interpreted, it doesn't need to be superfluous, and it shouldn't compromise the sound quality. There is only one thing it needs to do: restore reality and restore the scene.
But before the most authentic musical aesthetics can be of value, the technological matrix in a headset needs to be prepared.
Linked together like a tapestry
To restore the authenticity of music through technological innovation in headphones means to make every board in the audio transmission barrel grow upward. If we were to find a metaphor for this work, the most appropriate one would be "tapes".
The tapestry, which represents a classic of Chinese aesthetics, can arrange hundreds of warp and weft threads in every inch, leaving no room for confusion or even the slightest error.
In the field of TWS headsets alone, Huawei already has 110 appearance patents, 401 invention patents, and 38 utility model patents. These technical capabilities are like threads, eventually woven into a tapestry belonging to "Huawei Audio". Because Huawei knows that if you want to achieve an "original" music experience, you can only firmly master the end-to-end full-link audio technology, and there is no other way.
We can take a look at how Huawei realizes the interlocking of technology and technology in a headset.
First of all, in the headphone chip that leverages product performance and links the software and hardware system, Huawei spent four years creating the world's first audio chip Kirin A2 that supports Polar code technology.
In order to determine this technical route and achieve breakthroughs in TWS earphones' two major breakthroughs in improving bandwidth and enhancing anti-interference capabilities, Huawei conducted a large number of simulation environment tests on more than ten anti-interference solutions. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack and finally selected the anti-interference capability, which was widely praised. Polar code technology. Huawei FreeBuds Pro 3 simultaneously achieves high bit rate and high anti-interference Bluetooth transmission, comprehensively breaking through the industry dilemma of lossless transmission, making the impossible of TWS earphones without lagging or loss of sound quality possible. .
As mentioned before, audio transmission is a barrel effect, and the upgrade of core components does not mean everything. Audio coding and decoding is the next test question waiting for Huawei. In this regard, Huawei has spent three years continuing to evolve its self-developed L2HC codec protocol. The new generation of L2HC 3.0 intelligent lossless audio coding and decoding protocol can expand the audio code rate to 1920kbps, achieving the best wireless audio transmission capability in the headset industry and completing an epic level in the field of audio coding and decoding. promote.
In terms of sound units, Huawei finally chose to equip FreeBuds Pro 3 with dual super-sensory original sound units after trying a variety of solutions. It includes a large-drive 11mm ultra-magnetic woofer and a micro-plate tweeter, which can achieve a wide-bandwidth, low-distortion, and high-transient sound effect, allowing music to be restored losslessly. .
At the software level, sound transmission is complex and changeable. Different volume levels and different structures of the human ear will lead to inconsistent sound collection effects, which requires software algorithms to assist and compensate. FreeBuds Pro 3 is equipped with a newly upgraded triple hearing real-time optimization algorithm, which can match the volume level, human ear structure and wearing status, allowing intelligent technology to ensure the reproduction of the original sound.
These technologies are "interlocked like a tapestry, big beads and small beads falling on a jade plate", and ultimately form the base of "original sound". Huawei's massive technology research and development in root chip, transmission, codec, playback, algorithm and other aspects have finally formed the super CD-level full-link lossless sound quality of FreeBuds Pro 3, allowing users to truly experience lossless audio.
After this "tapes" is in place, we can try to answer the questions in "Oppenheimer": at least we are ready to hear the music, to hear the original music.
“A handful of firewood” and technological aesthetics
Just like a good musical instrument supports a musician's performance, powerful audio technology and audio engineering capabilities support the release of the aesthetic charm of original music in headphones.
Technology and aesthetics are indispensable on the way to "really hearing music". To this end, Huawei and musicians from the Central Conservatory of Music jointly launched a series of industry-university cooperation projects.
This time, Huawei FreeBuds Pro 3 combines six musicians from the Central Conservatory of Music: tenor Xie Tian, pianist Huang Yameng, erhu player Yang Xue, cellist Zhu Mu, composer Zhang Zheng and violinist Jin Haiyin formed the "Chief Tuning Troupe of the Central Conservatory of Music" and professionally tuned FreeBuds Pro 3 in all professional artistic directions including piano, vocal music, folk music, orchestral music, and composition, covering users' music style preferences.
Under the consensus of both parties on "original" music, six musicians came to Huawei Audio Lab and were deeply involved in the product sound performance and music style debugging of Huawei FreeBuds Pro 3. On the basis of lossless transmission capabilities, It strives to bring the sense of layering and detail of real music performances in the concert hall to headphones, achieving a sound quality effect of "transparent high frequencies, surging low frequencies, rich details, and distinct layers".
Objectively speaking, we have learned about many similar cross-border cooperation before, but they generally only have symbolic and brand significance, and the real changes to the product experience are not big. But this time the cooperation between Huawei and Yangyin is completely different. Users can clearly and clearly feel the changes brought by the six musicians in FreeBuds Pro 3. Under the guidance and suggestions of musicians, Huawei engineers innovatively adopted free-field frequency response testing to optimize the original problem of missing high frequencies and excessively bright vocals. The use of the imitation test system brought a closer to actual listening experience. .
For example, during the listening test, Professor Xie Tian put forward requirements for the separation effect of audio and vocals when there are rich musical instrument components. He believes, "There is a big difference between the recording of bel canto and popular songs. Bel canto recording is very difficult. When we sing, the resonance is great and we are far away from the microphone. If we use the recording method of popular songs, the entire curve will be different." It’s a sonic boom. If you can’t have loud booms and don’t want to lose details, then the dynamic range of the recording must be large, and the bandwidth of the corresponding headphones must be wide enough so that all the frequency components can be accurately reproduced.”
These professional guidance and high requirements demonstrate that top audio technical capabilities are required in order to bring out the debugging capabilities of top musicians.
Musician Jin Haiyin said, "We and Huawei have a common goal, which is to faithfully restore it. Huawei is technically prepared, and we are willing to add another firewood to this flame."
This firewood has changed the embarrassment of not being able to really hear the music while listening to music on TWS headphones; this firewood has ignited the possibility of re-perceiving and enjoying music in the busy life; this firewood has bloomed with the beauty of the original sound .
Behind this firewood, the cooperation between Huawei and the Central Music Ensemble can be said to have brought together China’s world-leading technological power and China’s highest-level musical aesthetics, ultimately forming a technological aesthetic unique to China.
China's technological aesthetics answers the eternal question of "can you hear music?"
We can penetrate the digital world and let everyone, every life, and even every atom truly hear music.
The digital world should be able to show people's joys and sorrows and present the beauty of art. In order to achieve this goal, we never stop and work hard every day to add firewood.
Original sound, the answer to all musical mysteries.
