The headphones that even a DJ can't break?

Before the pandemic hit Anne Frankenstein would be DJ-ing in bars or clubs most Friday and Saturday nights.

She laughs when asked if she misses it: "Not really, I kind of prefer the quiet life. I think I was playing a few too many gigs before lockdown. It's been nice to just enjoy music at my own pace."

Fortunately for Anne she has a day job - her mid-morning show on Jazz FM.

As well as making life hectic, those gigs took a toll on her kit, in particular headphones. She has "completely destroyed" headphones in the past through overuse and crushing them by accident.

Having learnt those expensive lessons, she doesn't spend much on headphones for work.

"I just get a nice cheap, robust pair of headphones, that isolate the sound well enough so I can hear adequately to DJ."

One of the reasons headphones can be delicate is that they have several moving parts inside. In fact the principle behind those moving parts has not changed much since speakers first emerged in the early 20th Century.

By passing an electrical current through a coil of wire placed near to a magnet, you can make the coil move. Attach a thin sheet of material (diaphragm) to that coil and the vibrations will make sound.

The so-called moving coil system has become much more sophisticated over the years. Better materials and clever electronics have improved the sound quality, and speakers have shrunk to a size that can fit into the ear.

However, there are still multiple moving parts in modern headphones, which can be broken.

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Making headphones more robust is just one of the promises of xMEMs, a Silicon Valley firm that thinks its technology can revolutionise the headphone market.

At the heart of its tech is something called the piezoelectric effect. If you bend some materials, they produce an electric current and the reverse is true as well, if you pass an electric current through them they bend.

The bendiness has been exploited for years to make sound, but that sound has been pretty unsophisticated - it's often used to make buzzers.Recent developments in materials have changed all that. Silicon Valley-based xMEMs has refined the technique and says its speakers can match the very best sound produced the traditional way.

Their speaker is very small and can be produced in the same way as a computer chip. Six of the little speakers can sit on one chip and, with everything in one place, the device is robust and waterproof.

"You're getting next level mechanical shock resistance," says Mike Housholder, VP of marketing at xMEMS. "You can drop a tray of these on the earbud assembly line, they're not going to break."

They also promise to be more effective at noise cancelling he says, a feature important for those who fly or use other public transport.

Mr Housholder expects the first headphones using his company's technology to hit the market next April.