I’ve been giving this some thought for a while – of course I enjoy writing about Avnera-enabled products, but I also want to bring this blog’s readership some discussion about a wider swath of products that maybe don’t involve Avnera at all, but maybe use our competitors or alternate wireless technologies to stream audio. It seems right and fair that I bring to the attention of this blog’s readers innovative and practical implementations of wireless audio, and highlight some of the new trends that enable experiences that may very well be on the verge of becoming mainstream.
So I’ve decided… it’s time I finally kick this off. It’s an area of the market I’ve spent considerable cycles on, and I want to share my basic observations about the various offerings out there, their value propositions, and where applicable, share my experiences. I’ll do my best to opine on pros and cons and since I’ll be focused on the end products and the application of wireless audio, it won’t so much be a commentary on whether the product maker made the right or wrong choice when it came to using Avnera or a competitor. This won’t necessarily be true when it comes to alternate wireless technologies… to the extent it impacts the end user experience positively or negatively. Don’t expect exhaustive reviews, or teardowns, since i really value minimalism when it comes to breaking down a concept or product. I’ll do my best to cut to the chase… which maybe I’m not doing so well in this post…
Expect to see commentary on solutions from Sony (S-AIR), Panasonic, Samsung, LG, Sennheiser, Sonos, Apple (AirTunes), Altec Lansing, Griffin (Evolve), Creative, Logitech (Bluetooth, ClearChat, Sqeezebox Duet), Rocketfish, Klipsch (KlipschCast), Bose. Products covered will involve various systems and technologies like WiFi, Bluetooth, and proprietary systems from Avnera, and our competitors.
It is most probably I’ll spend some time comparing various OEMs products to one another… it usually helps highlight differentiators, but it’s also more fun that way.
Also expect me to introduce and use sparingly a lexicon that will be useful in order to better understand features and differentiators. We’ll touch on and get to the nut of concepts such as:
- Wireless protocols: standards-based vs. proprietary, transmission frequency
- Audio transmission: Asynchronous vs. isochronous
- Audio payload formats: compressed vs. lossless vs. uncompressed
- Audio payload metrics: bitrates, precision, sampling rates, SNR, and frequency response.
- End to end latency: fixed vs. variable, short vs. long
- Interference rejection vs. injection, wireless coexistance
- Number of audio channels: Mono vs. Stereo vs. Multi-channel
- Basic audio product marketing and feature-set buzzwords like power output, surround sound, HTIB, subwoofer, 2.1, 5.1, 7.1, HD vs. CD, Blu-ray, Dolby TrueHD, virtual surround, SRS TruSurround HD, Dolby Headphone, Dolby Virtual Speaker, etc…
I hope this ends up being generally useful… Stay tuned…
One Comment
Tat will be Cool -)