The Future of PC-Audio: Interview With Keith Kowal

red_ed writes "The Noise Report have an interview with Keith Kowal from VIA technologies' Audio division about the future of PC audio. Here's a snippet: 'I think the next big thing will be the widespread adoption of wireless speakers and headphones--cause none of us like a tangle of wires. From a PC infrastructure point of view I can easily see support for these devices being integrated right into the PC.'"

Comments

Wireless Speakers

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple's already ahead of the game. I know it only works with iTunes, but it's the right sort of idea.

32bit audio? No Way

[Ironsides]

Keith: Certainly for more professional soundcards there is a need for 32-bit support as producers often like to do the mastering in the highest level possible before downcoverting for the final tracks. I agree though that it is more difficult to justify 32-bit support on the desktop. I don't think its really intended as a marketing gimmick, its just more that the HD Audio spec supported 32-bit operation, so they are of course touting that support. I would not expect to see many 32-bit HD Audio codecs in the foreseeable future though.

Current hadware is only really able to achieve an effective ~20bit resolution due to thermal noise in the components. Unitl we take that down a couple of notches there is no reason to use anything more precise such as 32bit.

Re:32bit audio? No Way

[wowbagger]

I will have to disagree with you on this.

When you do filtering, summation, scaling, etc., you frequently find yourself adding multiple values together, then later dividing by some number - for example a filter algorithm would involve adding 256 samples together, then dividing by 256 (roughly speaking...)

When you do something like that, you need at least 8 bits of headroom in the processing stages or else you either overflow (nasty) or have to drop least significant bits (noisy).

Running a 32 bit processing channel, even though the final result doesn't need more than 20 bits of resolution allows you to process filters with up to 4096 taps without overflow.

Sure, you can go to a floating point system, but that adds quite a bit of complexity to the system.

I work with 24 bit DSPs all the time (Motorola 56301), and frequently have to use the 48 bit long-long format in the core of my routines to prevent overflow. If they were 32 bit DSPs, that would greatly simplify my life.

Re:The real future

[latent_biologist]

Agreed. They make all these funky 5.1, 6.1 & now even 7.1 sound arrangements for PC's but you have to buy crappy (& overpriced) PC speakers in most cases to take advantage of all the plugs. Last time i built, i made sure my audio had SPDIF in/out. One cable runs neatly to the cheap $60 wal-mart amp/speaker set w/ SPDIF in. It sounds better than any other PC audio arrangment i've had. (Why oh why, did nVidia axe soundstorm?).

batteries, boo, small, yay!

[claussenvenable]

Portable wireless speakers are retarded. I don't need to spend 10 bucks on batteries every few days, and I don't need my shitty portable speakers to have 6 feet of stereo separation between them.

What, do people think that putting two 5-dollar cost-of-goods speakers 6 feet apart for "big stereo image" makes them sound like anything other than the crap they're made of? Good speakers are large, heavy, and permanently installed with wires hidden.

There IS, however, a use for this stuff.
If I need it wireless, it's because I need to move around.
If I need to move around, it's pretty safe to say I will piss of *everyone* if my music moves around with me (see: bumps in the trunk)
A wireless set of high-quality in-ear-canal headphones (Etymotics make some, Sony makes some, Apple too now) could be *great*.

They have very little driver travel, so the power consumption is small, and properly designed you could have a combination headset/headphone setup with passable-not-great quality. It would kick ass to be able to wear headphones under my hat and not have those pesky wires.

Anyone else use Etymotics and have the painful experience of snagging a wire on a doorknob? Accidentally yanking things out of the ear canal ain't fun.

Re:There's one small problem..

[mirko]

Check Yamaha's 01X. It uses Yamaha's new protocol : mLan which consists of MIDI with audio over Firewire.
I guess this is the future : isochronous audio over an heterogeneous network.

Cochlear Implants

[Anonymous Coward]

Introduction to cochlear implants

These are essentially what you're talking about. The reason it's not well known is that the resulting sensation is primarily useful for understanding speech. You wouldn't put these in for a more direct input of Beethoven's Ninth.

In many ways the eyes are actually simpler to deal with because the information coming in isn't mechanically transformed... light is focused on the retina, nerves light up, and bing.

In the ear sound waves bounce off all the crenellations of the external cartilage, phase shifting slightly forward or backward to provide spatial information. Different cilia respond to different sound frequncies... the nature of input that the ears are processing is less obvious and less uniform between people.

It's also harder to ask people to calibrate an audio implant. With the visual implants you're talking about they can say "is the second spot above or below the first? now where is it? Tell me when they merge." The patient actually does the calibration. With sound so many of the aspects are hard to describe and quantify even for a trained musician.

Wires are your friends.

[poot_rootbeer]

The thing about my home computer is, it always stays in the same place. I really have no objection to the CPU being tethered to the power outlet, and the keyboard and mouse and monitors and cable modem and home theater receiver to the CPU, and the coaxial cable to the cable modem, and six speakers to the receiver, because they never move. All the components stay in the same place in relation to each other and to everything else.

Bluetooth.

[John Sokol]

I have a generic Taiwanese USB Bluetooth adapter on my PC that I use to transfer photos from my Phone to my PC.
It uses the Widcomm drivers.

I bought one of those Motorola HS810 bluetooth Wireless earpieces for uses with the phone.

Just as an experiment I was able to pair the earphone with the PC. I lost the ablity to use the soundcard on the PC but I was able to hear and record decient audio from the earpiece.

Worked great, but with there was an easier way to switch between the two, or have both work at the same time. Maybe more mixer channels.

I was able to use a VOIP app with the earpiece and walk about my house even better then a cordless phone. Total cost $20 for USB->BT and $100 for BT Earpiece.

I wish someone would come out with Bluetooth speakers, expecialy if I would be able to use them from multiple PC's.

As for someone else post about security in here I do believe there is type of security implemented when you Pair Bluetooth devices.

Doesn't have to be new amps...

[WoTG]

I agree!

I'm sitting in front of a late 70's Kenwood amp and some similarly aged 7 inch speakers. They're older than I am, yet they sound much better than most computer speakers I find at the houses of friends and family. They should sound decent, since they cost more than my entire computer in inflation adjusted dollars! Let's face it, regular amplifier and speaker technology hasn't really changed that much over the years.

I'm sure at the higher end of PC sound systems, things are different, but in the low and medium ranges, old fashioned amps and speakers work just fine.

FWIW, my amp does double duty as a good monitor stand. Plus, I like having a real metal case rather than more plastic on my desk.