Sony WH-1000XM6 FCC Teardown
Wind Noise Reduction
Sony claims they have redesigned the structure around the microphones and refined their placement to reduce the effects of wind noise. So can we see this? Here is the mic structure from the WH-1000XM5.
And here is the WH-1000XM6 microphone structure courtesy of the iFixit video. In the video, there are more angles of the mics, but these 2 below are the best I could find.
The structure seems a bit different, but it is difficult to say for certain how much different. The mics do appear to be placed few millimetres deeper in the new model. Maybe once we get a 52Audio teardown, they will have better photos of the XM6 mic structure up close, allowing us to get a better comparison.
QN3
Finally turning back to the QN3. The iFixit photo lacks the details to give an easy ID, but I may have figured out what is written on the chip. With some photo enhancement magic, this is the result. You may have to zoom in to see the it more clearly.
I believe the text is D3785. There is no SONY logo on the chip like the QN1 (seen below on the right).
The first 3 numbers were easy to identify, 378, but the last one was a challenge, either it was a 5 or a 2. Looking at other Sony chips, it was obvious the number looked closer to a 5 (red arrow), than a 2 (blue arrow). If D3785 is the actual text on the chip, then I am confident we are looking at the CXD3785, which is part of Sony’s Audio IC line. Unfortunately the chip is absent from the list on the page.
Update: With 52Audio’s teardown, we can see D3785 was the correct text on the chip.
We have a bit information from Sunnic, such as the CXD3784, which is absent from Sony’s Audio IC page. Lucky for us, Sunnic has a news post with a roadmap from 2021. I have no idea how I missed this before.
We have quite a few new chips in this roadmap:
- CXD378x over-ear and in-ear headphones
- CXD378x TWS
- CXD379x TWS
- CXD329x TWS
I suspect the QN3 in the WH-1000XM6 is this new CXD378x for OH/IE headphones, that went into production in 2023. This appears to be the successor of the CXD3782. This chip is a Hybrid noise cancelling (feedforward/feedback), with an integrated 6-band EQ, 6-channel ADC, and 2-channel DAC. The datasheet can be found here. The block diagram only shows single noise cancelling, which contradicts the description, so maybe the block diagram is wrong.
I suspect the QN3 (CXD3785) adds more ADC channels, and a 10-band EQ. Anything additional will remain a mystery. Unless Sony decides to sell this to other customers, we probably will not see a datasheet online. Finally, withe the roadmap information, I have a hunch that the QN2e could be the CXD379x or CXD329x, as the QN1e was the CXD3781. But that is a post for another day. Edit, some new information has been discovered thanks to Mr Walkman, which reveals that the second chip in the WF-1000XM5 is actually CXD3784.
And that concludes the this teardown post, make sure to check out the iFixit teardown, as it provides additional details not posted here.
