Sony WH-1000XM6 FCC Teardown
The iFixit teardown lacks a view of the reverse side of the PCB, so we are stuck with the FCC filing photo, which is does not have the best quality.
We have a few chips on the reverse side. Could the top chip be another flash memory chip? The size and shape match the one from the WH-1000XM5, but why have another chip on this side, when we already have on the other? No idea. We have 2 more mystery chips under the top one, no idea what these could be. Some chips used in the WH-1000XM5 are absent here, like the Cirrus Logic CS47L63 (high-performance, low-power audio DSP), and a gyroscope IC, perhaps one of the unknown chips.
In the lower end of the left earcup is the jack PCB, with the 3.5mm port, the LED indicator light. and the 2 button controls. The board is connected to the main PCB through a ribbon cable, so like all other parts, can be easily replaced.
Finally let us look at the noise cancellation microphones. There are 12 in total. First up, the feedforward/voice microphone array.
The FF/voice MEMS microphones are all on a ribbon cable, like in the XM5. The XM5 has 4 microphones on the left side, and 3 microphones on the right, in its arrays. I compared the size of the microphones using the rulers in the photos, and the MEMS mics are the same size.
The feedback microphones now come in pairs.
The left side has the wear detection sensor, which is why the ribbon cable is wider. From my understanding, one mic faces towards the the ear, the other towards the driver. I am still not sure 2 feedback microphones are necessary, but I suspect Sony has compared the performance of 1 vs 2 mics, and deemed that 2 is better than 1.
