Clip-ons like Bose’s new OpenAudio use air conduction to direct sound near the ear canal, and neckbands like Shokz’ new DirectPitch use bone conduction to vibrate through the cheekbones and into the inner ear. Dozens of other manufacturers introduced clip-ons, neckbands, and all variations in between, including JBL, which dropped five new open-earbuds this CES with some impressive new noise-canceling technology. Your listeners are about to become a lot more mobile, so listen up. Now is not the time for broadcasters to slack off on sound quality.

In his white paper released in July, our Jeff Keith covers what we know about human hearing and his findings on Critical Band Theory of Spectral Audio Processing for FM. Jeff also spent hours upon hours in the processing lab learning about the effects of aggressive processing on streaming codecs. You can read about his findings in this Sound Plan for Streaming article that appeared in the March 2025 issue of Wheat News.

We plan to keep pushing as much sound quality through the airwaves and across the Internet as possible because, after all, audio isn’t the most important thing. It’s the only thing.