Founded in 1946 and known for quality speakers, Klipsch celebrates its 75th anniversary this year. Part of that blowout features the launch of two new sets of earphones offering not only active noise cancellation (ANC) but artificial intelligence (AI)-based gestures and a new sound-enhancement system. The iconic, high-end brand said its new Klipsch T5 II True Wireless ANC earphones will feature "truly hands-free operation" through Bragi embedded AI. Bragi itself once made headphones but now only makes software. With that kind of operating system installed, you can take a call by nodding your head or reject a call by shaking your head.

Klipsch, the great American speaker maker, has been helping audio enthusiasts to annoy their neighbors since 1949. The brand has an iconic status in the USA and has been at the forefront of so much pioneering audio technology thanks to founder Paul W Klipsch. The company is celebrating its 75th anniversary and, as part of the celebrations, it has announced two new pairs of true wireless earphones with active noise cancellation (ANC) technology and artificial intelligence. Klipsch claims both models have been designed to provide ultimate comfort and performance. The new Klipsch T5 II True Wireless ANC earphones will be the first earphones to feature a frictionless experience powered by a built-in operating system powered by Bragi embedded AI.

The original Gear IconX delivered lots of good features for a first-generation product, including onboard media storage and heart rate tracking. But those positives were outweighed by poor battery life, an unreliable connection and buttons that could be awkward to use while the device was being worn. The 2018 follow-up addresses these concerns with vastly improved connectivity and battery life along with a touch-based interface that won't press painfully on your ears. The new IconX also adds Bixby into the mix, though The Verge found it was still somewhat unreliable at both voice recognition and delivering relevant information. At any rate, Bixby is only available on the S8, S8 and Note 8 for now, so if you own another handset you'd be better served by other earbuds on this list, most of which lack voice interaction but do everything else a bit better.

Audio Analytic, the pioneer of sound recognition software and hearables manufacturer Bragi, today announced a partnership to collaborate on incorporating sound recognition capabilities into Bragi devices. The companies share a vision of how embeddable intelligent sound recognition can bring new levels of usability, convenience and safety to earphone users. At January's Consumer Electronics Show 2018 (CES) Audio Analytic, will use their conversation detection demonstration, developed with Bragi, to illustrate how sound recognition can help consumers seamlessly move between a rich audio experience and spontaneous interactions with their friends and important events around them. Bragi is a pioneer in the smart hearables category. The company manufactures wireless earphones with sensors and intelligence that enable features including real-time translation, fitness tracking, music, and gesture controls.

As before, the AI will be built into the earpieces themselves and thus won't depend on your phone or an internet connection to make sense of the world. And that's important -- the ultimate goal is to reduce the need for physical controls by having your earbuds automatically do the right thing, and that means ensuring that the AI responds quickly and consistently. It's not clear when this feature might be available to the public. It could be key to Bragi's future, whenever it shows up. Other fledgling companies have struggled to survive, and heavyweights like Apple, Google and Samsung are closing in.

Upon visiting Berlin's IFA2107 -- Germany's answer to CES -- recently, there was one word I kept hearing: Alexa. In the consumer hardware space, it's a great time to be Amazon, if the sheer number of hardware companies jumping on the Alexa bandwagon are anything to go by. Only today it was revealed that Amazon is working on a pair of smart glasses integrating Alexa, intended to look similar to regular glasses with bone conduction technology to allow the user to engage with Alexa without having to wear headphones. Amazon is also working on an Echo connected camera system that cannot only keep a look out for intruders but also Amazon-delivered packages. During the IFA conference, a number of companies made their own Alexa announcements.

Known for driving the hearables tech space into a new phase, startup Bragi has announced their latest venture with online shopping giant Amazon. With the objective to make the Dash series (The Dash, The Dash Pro) Alexa-compatible, this collaboration will mark the first for intelligent personal assistant Alexa. Designed for convenience, the Amazon Alexa is capable of voice interaction, music playback, making to-do lists, setting alarms, streaming podcasts, playing audiobooks, and providing weather, traffic, and other real time information, such as news. Founded in 2013, Munich-based Bragi have cornered the hearable market with their innovative technology. They gained popularity during its Kickstarter campaign, where 15,998 backers contributed over $3.3 million (USD).

Amazon's Alexa may be a useful digital assistant, but it's a lot less useful when you're away from your Echo hardware. Wireless headphone-maker Bragi is looking to bridge the gap between Alexa and your phone with its Dash and Dash Pro earbuds. Thanks to a software update coming in October, you'll be able to talk to Alexa using Bragi's headphones. Once you update your headphones and link your Amazon account in the Bragi app for iOS and Android, you'll be able to start talking with Alexa through your headphones the same way you can with Siri or the Google Assistant. The above video shows a few examples of what you can do with this integration, but if you've used the Amazon Echo you should have a good idea of what to expect.

It may sound like the fictional fish used to translate languages in'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy', but a German startup has brought the Babel fish to life with earbuds. Called Dash Pro tailored by Starkey, these high-tech earbuds are capable of integrating with the iTranslate app, providing face-to-face conversational language translation in nearly 40 different languages. While wearing the custom earbuds, users simply activate the app and carry on a conversation that will be translated into their native tongue in real-time. Bragi has unveiled two new products to the family – The Dash Pro tailored by Starkey and The Dash Pro, which is a'reengineered sequel to The Dash that continues to press innovation forward,' the firm explained. The Dash Pro tailored by Starkey integrates with the iTranslate app, which will translate the conversations into the wearer's native tongue.

Before the ear-computer market took off, before AirPods and Here Ones and EarIn and Skybuds and IQBuds and Kanoa and a thousand other names you've never heard of, there was Bragi. The German company blew up on Kickstarter in 2014 after introducing a pair of headphones called Dash, which it claimed could play music, measure your health in complicated ways, let you control your gadgets with a nod, and hear the real world and digital audio simultaneously. Dash didn't do everything Bragi promised, and made it clear that this cool new world of in-ear computers remained a ways off. "We're so early in this entire industry," says CEO Nikolaj Hviid. "Sometimes I feel we're a bit too early."