Bestbuy.com has just posted the four newest Rocketfish SKUs. The noteworthy element here is that they are all Rocketboost-enabled devices. The underlying digital wireless technology is based on Avnera's AM2G wireless audio solution, which has undergone a spiffing up via some API goodness added to their solution to enhance interoperability for device makers and foster ease-of-use for consumers.
Currently, the initial RocektBoost devices are four unique Rocketfish-branded pieces of hardware that are sold as two bundles, and two add-ons. Let's break it down.
The Bundles
The two main experiences that the bundles... or maybe more apt, the starter-kits address are:
- Adding wireless speakers to your HD home theater receiver. (see RF-RBKIT below)
- Playing music outdoors wirelessly to a weather-resistant speaker. (RF-RBWS02 below)
Bundle 1: RF-RBKIT - $199.99
As a follow-on (and significant upgrade) to the RF-WHTIB, the RF-RBKIT is composed of a "sender" and a stereo amp receiver, also sold standalone as the RF-RBREC. Compared to the original RF-WHTIB, which was meant to be a wireless surround enabler for entry-class HTIB systems, the new "KIT" is targeted more at higher end home theater systems... it adds more amplifier power (50 Watts per channel output) for two surround speakers, as well as support for two more wireless channels. This was a feature requested often by buyers of the original RF-WHTIB kit. This means that the new KIT can be expanded upon by adding an additional RF-RBREC (sold sep for $99) to enable either 4 channels of wireless surround sound for 7.1 setups, or alternatively, a set of Zone-B wireless speakers in another room for a 5.1 + zone B arrangement. Actually, it can enable more than a set... try 8 zone B receivers total on top of the surround speakers doing their thing in peace. Range for transmission is at least 100 feet indoors. YMMV.
Bundle 2: RF-RBWS02 - $149.99
The second bundle at retail is the RF-RBWS02. The bundle's first piece consists of a transmitter, also sold standalone as RF-RBAUX, which is a cool little widget because it can receive audio too... very powerful (see RF-RBAUX below), along with a "wireless indoor/outdoor speaker." The RBAUX takes any audio input via 3.5mm minijack and transmits it wirelessly to the wireless speaker. Again, range is 100 feet indoors... but outdoors may be quite more depending on obstructions impacting line of sight.
The Devices
Let's review the four devices to clearly understand what capabilities each device brings to the Rocketboost ecosystem.
RF-RBREC - $99.99
The RF-RBREC is very simple. It's a 50W x 2 (into 6 ohms) wireless stereo amplifier. It can be matched to any 4 to 8 ohm traditional (passive) speaker. The wireless amp's design makes it suitable to hide at the back of the room, or to place on a bookshelf and control via the included IR remote.
RF-RBKIT-Sender (not sold separately as of this writing)
The sender has two stereo inputs in the back. Each stereo channel has speaker-level and pre-amp level connections via terminal posts and RCA (via included mini-jack adaptor), respectively. For any audio gear-head, a quick look at the back panel makes it simpler than it sounds.
When connected, each stereo input becomes a wireless Rocketboost "source" and is denoted on the front panel by "A" and "B" indicators, adjacent to the source enable/disable buttons. So now, any compatible wireless receiver can select either "A" or "B" content to render. Also, to satisfy the home theater application requirements, each source can be made "HD" by pressing an HD button. This allows the sender to meet the stringent SNR and latency requirements for Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD system approval. Home theater geeks may find this appealing, though I dare any normal person to tell the difference. Another great feature, if i do say so myself, is the 4-channel lock switch. This makes A and B receivers have exactly the same gain level, ensuring home theater AVRs can precisely tune the surround channels using whatever advanced features it has to do so.
RF-RBAUX - $59.99
The RBAUX is my favorite, and yes it's simple, and because of this, it's also kind of awesome. It's sold separately, as well as included in the RBWS02 speaker bundle. When included in the speaker bundle, the device serves as a wireless stereo transmitter. It takes line input stereo and sends it wirelessly. The real beauty of this device is that it also has a line output, so it can be used as a wireless receiver for any Rocketboost wireless source device. The output can also serve as a loop-back for the line input... which means you can "splice" the RBAUX into your PC's audio output, as an example, and still play the audio back through your desktop speakers, in the meantime trasmitting that audio to the rest of the Rocketboost network. Tres cool.
You can use the RBAUX in so many ways! It's like the 2x4 Lego piece... super useful. Based on the Rocketfish SKUs, however, it is most obvious to use the RBAUX as either a Zone-B wireless receive adaptor for a powered speaker system (by pairing with the RBKIT sender), or as a transmitter for whatever audio device you want (to send to a outdoor speaker, a RBREC, or another RBAUX).
RF-RBWS02-Speaker (not sold separately as of this writing)
The wireless speaker is a bi-amplified, woofer+tweeter arrangment. It can be used alone as a mono speaker, or if you have additional speakers, you can let one render the R channel, and one the L channel, or both depending on your arrangement. The speaker is rated at 22 Watts, and can run on AC, alkaline batteries, or NiMH rechargeable batteries, which also charge via the AC adaptor - no removal of the batteries required to charge. Just be careful not to try and charge the alkalines... there's probably a switch and a clear warning against this as is typical in this category.
Expand and customize your Rocketboost mix to suit your world
The point of all these devices being Rocketboost is this: all these devices work together! Yep. So, as a couple examples above illustrate, you can now really tailor your wireless audio experience to suit your needs as a unique consumer living in a unique home environment.
At the simplest level, anything that can receive audio, can playback audio from any device that can send audio.
A few advanced facts about Rocketboost that can help feed the creative/curious mind
- Audio is sent across the Rocketboost network as 16-bits, 48 KHz, uncompressed PCM audio. i.e. slightly better than good ole CD-quality.
- End-to-end latency for a standard definition audio stream is fixed, and around 18 milliseconds. HD is less. I'm not sure how much was settled on.
- To start a Rocketboost network, the user must select one device to act as the "hub." Only one device per Rocketboost network can be configured as the "Hub." Any device which can serve as the hub has a switch on the back.
- The hub will take care of all the pairing for adding devices to the network, as well as coordinate all the advanced RF channel hopping, quality of service magic, and interference avoidance that goes on. It's the network coordinator. It's probably best to make the hub something that is plugged into the wall.
- If your needs demand it, don't worry, you can set up as many hubs as you want, but just know that when you do so, you'll be creating parallel universes from a network perspective, so devices paired to one hub cannot send or receive audio to devices paired to another hub. (To get real geeky, each network also will need one-third of the available RF 2.4 GHz spectrum. So in most cases you will be limited to 3 audio networks.. but you might get more, if they aren't heavily utilized, because the intelligent adaptive channel hopping capabilities of Rocketboost are quite astounding... just so long as you aren't in a crazy WiFi hotbed... as with all 2.4GHz stuff, YMMV.)
- Any one network can support 10 devices, or nodes.
- Any audio input will become a wireless audio source. I am pretty sure the sources are jack-sensed, e.g. RBAUXes won't be eating up audio transmission bandwidth unless there is an audio device plugged in.
- The audio network can support up to 5 simultaneous (stereo) sources transmitting at the same time. Any device on the network can be the source of audio.. not only the hub.
- Inherently, any wireless audio source is one-to-many capable.
- ... because of the last four notes, you can see that the end-user created topologies for audio flow in the home can vary widely. That's the point.
Hint: It's useful to think of Rocketboost like plugging in and "erecting" local radio stations. Then, each audio receiver, whether it's a speaker, an amplifier, or a line-out adaptor, can simply "tune-in" to one of these local radio stations. That's kind of the notion underlying the original system design by Avnera. Think about it this way, and you'll start to envision how you can apply the products to your world.
Rocketfish's initial Rocketboost devices more or less leaves control of your actual content up to you. It is more about connectivity and audio robustness. It's lots of wireless audio sophistication crammed into simple, versatile end-products.
Have fun. Share your experiences here. I'm sure readers would like to know how folks make the most of this new wireless audio capability.
Disclaimer: When I was with Avnera, I worked on numerous aspects of these products, from the early wireless chip definition, to supporting the spec phase of the end-products for the customer. That was a long time ago and things have evolved a bit since in the process of bringing them to market. So I am not an official authority by any measure... but I am a believer ;-).
Wednesday, September 1, 2010 at 10:56AM 
