Final LAB I

The housing is created using a 3D printer with 64 titanium. Delivers overwhelming realism with its voluminous bass tones.

Weighty bass tones are realized with a full-range dual balanced armature driver unit. Employs a titanium 64 housing shaped using a 3D printer. This is a form that allows for realistic music reproduction while curbing unnecessary vibrations.

BAM mechanism produces bass sounds and stereo spatial interpretations
With balanced armature driver units, iron is driven to produce sound, and as such, these drivers face a number of problems, amongst which are "proving tiring to listen to", "having a sound that is subtle and beautiful, but lacking in depth and being flat" and "lacking bass interval". At final, we decided to focus on developing technology for the reproduction of bass tones and three-dimensional space with the full-range reproduction of a theoretically unproblematic single driver unit, rather than taking things in a multiway direction. We went back to the beginning and reviewed the performance of the balanced armature driver, focusing our attention on something we had previously overlooked – airflow inside the housing. We developed BAM (Balancing Air Movement), a mechanism that optimizes airflow inside the housing through the creation of an aperture in the driver unit, which is usually sealed.
While achieving bass tones and deep, three-dimensional spatial representation, which proved difficult with single driver full-range reproduction, we achieved a BA type that at the same time made for natural listening the user doesn't tire of.

Full-range dual balanced armature driver
Dual-use of final audio design's original full-range balanced armature driver unit. By doing so, we've realized a weighty bass tone.

Titanium 64 housing formed via 3D printer
Shapes formed using a 3D printer don't just appear with the touch of a button. Different know-how is especially necessary at each point when it comes to forms created from metal. Each point is quantified and accumulated as explicit knowledge. But when it comes to deciding how to go about combining all of this different knowhow and in what order of precedence, then what is necessary is the intuition of the craftsman. Rather than rendering the work of the craftsman unnecessary, shaping metal using a 3D printer necessitates there being human resources that could be termed digital craftsmen, in that they consider the output data to be created that takes into account the shape of the finished product, the cost, precision, the smoothness of the surface and a number of other elements. To reach the best output data for the housing here, we trialed a great number of prototypes.

And finishing off the surface is not easy either. The 3D printer irradiates metal powder over an extremely small area with a laser, melting it and then hardening it over and over so that the form is created. Owing to this, the surface is pocked with the marks left by the laser's irradiation and has a rough finish. Polishing this up requires just as much know-how as shaping the object does. It was thought that polishing it to the degree that its precision as a product was maintained was impossible. Here, with the cooperation of a coordinator specializing in specially-processed metals, we combined the skills of the craftsmen in many ways and with the output from the 3D printer, realized a beautifully polished finish for the titanium 64 (usually a hard metal to polish) housing.

Original ear pieces – two types to choose from
The thin part of the silicon ear pad that seals the auditory canal resonates with alacrity. The more the seal strength is increased and the sound insulating properties heightened, the greater the influence of the resonance. Bass tones from the resonance of the earpieces invariably reverberate in a sluggish manner, and the music's vividness is undermined. At final, we created more than one hundred samples and selected the eartip that made the most natural bass sound production possible. We enclosed five sizes (SS / S / M / L / LL) together, enabling the consumer to choose the one they prefer.