Our third Behind the Buds covers one of the unsung stars of the any good true wireless buds; the controls. From the buttons you can become the master of your soundtrack; playing, skipping, and changing the volume of your playlists; or even command your own personal genie: including Siri, Google Assistant, and several other omnipotent sources of knowledge and command.
Pushing Technology
The original TrueConnect was built around a mechanical push button; examples of which you can find on… really anything created in the last 200 years. We made this part of the design of the TrueConnect; a simple, pleasing circle around our beautiful RHA logo.
With TrueConnect 2 we kept the circle, but changed the button itself. Now you don’t have to physically push the buds – even slightly – into your ear anymore, which risks a very slight, very quick, but still very noticeable change to the sound and fit. Instead you can just tap it, like you would a phone screen, or a cat’s nose, and achieve the same effect. How does this work?
Touch Sensitive
No offence, but you’re a big conductor (see, for reference, the 1999 docu-drama The Matrix). If you touch anything on earth, you’re communicating some kind of electrical charge to it. Incidentally, this is one of several reasons you should never stick your hand inside a computer. Capacitive touch surfaces – such as your phone screen, TrueConnect 2 button, or fancy oven – are an insulator surface (such as glass or ABS plastic) – coated with another conductor. The interaction between you – the intelligent and handsome conductor – and your device – the inanimate and dumb conductor – is then measured for duration and movement and then used as a command.
Less is More
We freed up a very small amount of space and weight by replacing this mechanical part with a smarter one. However, in true wireless earbuds, a “very small amount of space” is a very large deal (see previous blog). In the TrueConnect 2, we were able to wrap a Bluetooth antenna around this space, improving even more on the signal and broadcast strength of the previous design.
So that’s why can change sound to your whim, or demand that your digital assistant turn down the lights, play folklore, or find out who the third president of the United States was (Thomas Jefferson).
