Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
Good to see development with PC audio after a long time.
Apple's already ahead of the game. I know it only works with iTunes, but it's the right sort of idea.
Ok, I have a tangle of wires. A huge tangle (2 monitors, keyboards, mice, 5 computers, one printer, two KVMs, ...). But why would I get wireless speakers? Either a) they'll all waste a ton of batteries, or b) they'll all need to be plugged in to the wall. The former is way too expensive, the latter is still another wire - and outlets are at a premium here!
I was hoping this would be a story about mainstream going to surround sound support, for a more realistic audio experience (whether that's playing Doom 4, or listening to a concert-hall performance of Bach or Beethoven).
First, I'm assuming that the speakers would still have a power cord, and thus still technically be "wired", but if they didn't have a power cord, batteries would be a big issue.
Second, and most importantly for any audiophiles out there, what happens to the sound quality? God knows how much money is spent on expensive speaker cables, so what happens when it goes wireless?
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
The REAL future of PC audio is what smart people have been doing for years... getting a $3 rradio Shack cable, and plugging the computer into a real stereo amp. I don't understand the obsession with getting tiny, overpriced, shitty sounding computer speakers when even a basic stereo from Wal-Mart is going to sound better than even the best "computer speakers". I know, I know, everybody has their favorite computer speakers, but there is simply no replacement for displacement. Meaning, bigger speakers being driven by a real amp will almost ALWAYS sound better than any computer speakers.
I don't respond to AC's.
But speaker wires are about the least likely cause of wire tangles in my setup. Considering power ables, mouse cables, monitor cables, ethernet cables, USB cables, Firewire Cables, MIDI cables. Even if I eliminate Mouse and Ethernet AND speaker, it still won't help much
... but worth replying anyway.
I think this guy's right on the money. I mean, we've had AirTunes for a while now, and now we've got bluetooth stereo headsets.
If you count Macs with onboard bluetooth, and most laptops too, then his prediction is already true.
I could definitely see widespread adoption if the price came down a bit -- that bluetooth headset is $240 USD, just a bit on the steep side.
I really *hope* they use Bluetooth instead of coming up with anothe random standard. There are already several Bluetooth headphones available, HP has some excellent ones.
"I think the next big thing will be the widespread adoption of wireless and speakers headphones--cause none of us like a tangle of wires"
I can see the benefit of wireless headphones, but how do wireless speakers even make sense?
I suppose you could eliminate the cable running from the PC to the amplifier if the amplifier was wireless enabled, but you still have to have some sort of wire running to each speaker to provide power. Unless you're planning on running your speakers off of batteries... in which case they'd need frequent recharging and would not be capable of putting out enough juice for decent sound.
OtakuBooty.com: Smart, funny, sexy nerds.
I like that everything is becoming wireless but as that happens more and more batteries are needed and to make matters worse those damn batteries die. Whats the point if you have to charge those items or replace the batteries every now and again. This kind of defeats the purpose of the simplicity of a wireless device. Why cant the industry standardize on a common induction system so I can just place all my wireless devices on a pad and have them charge automatically.
Bah,
Am I the only one that likes wired peripherals better than the overhead added by wireless?
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
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.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Excellent an excuse for having porn on my computer.... the neighbors garage door opener did it :-)
My speakers will always require some wires because I don't want to power them with batteries.
To go wireless with any PC, get yourself a nice little stereo FM transmitter and tune in from the next room. Monster cable's model for cars works excellently. The cheap battery powered model from CompUSA looks great with that aluminum case, but it did not broadcast in stereo for me. I hope they fix that because it was perfect otherwise with an external power jack for an included car plug or any cheap transformer and AAA battery for walking around. You can be sure that others, such as the Belkin models for $15 at Walmart, will work or one that does will find it's way to the shelves soon.
Why did I want to buy another set of speakers again? So that someone could slip the RIAA encrypted streaming wet dream on me? No thanks.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Give me the ability to set the volume level per application. I mean really, did you ever had a system message go off when you were watching a movie that required you to turn up the speaker to maximum volume?
In the business world, I don't want wireless ANYTHING on the workstations unless it's encrypted AND authorized.
Last thing I need is some employee using wireless audio to download corporate data to his car out in the parking lot. Worse, a virus using it to send corporate data to anyone within scanning distance.
I want 5.1+ wireless at home so I can pipe it through my stereo in the next room, but for security's sake, if you put it on the motherboard make sure I can disable it in the BIOS.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
What do they really mean by integration? Have the antenna built into the motherboard? This would cause some major EMI issues combined with your box's ability, by design, to block signals. I'd imagine the antenna would have to be external. In this case, I still don't trust the sound quality unless they're using DSS and sending a relatively high powered signal to your headphones. In which case, more issues arise because you'd basically have to have a sound card built into the headphones, how much power drain, how bulky, and how costly would that be?
Just some thoughts, I wonder how far along or practical this idea really is. Would be cool to see though.
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.
We lay in bed while the music, scenery, and environmnet surrounding us changes on a vague thought as we have 24hours/day of non stop orgasms.
which company is ready to build me a chip that allows this?
Actually, this gives me an excellent opportunity to rebut my own post (see how long it stays mod'd so high). First, however, I'll address Tibor's point: you're comparing apples to oranges, my friend. With phones, the wireless part is the part you carry around with you. With speakers, generally speaking (no pun intended!), you place the speakers once, and you're done. They're very, very static. Completely unlike anything that can be held in your hand (such as a phone, a laptop, camera, etc. - a camera that doesn't need a wire to hook up to your PC, now that would be useful!).
The advantage of wireless speakers really is that you can have a centrally-located PC-based home-theatre system (and I mean the entire home - a set of speakers in the den, another in the kitchen, another in the front room, another in ...). I suspect that this technology is merely for a single output - all rooms get the same sound. What would make this really useful, IMO, is to first get surround-sound output working, and then to be able to have a single wireless soundcard able to handle multiple outputs independantly.
Wireless headphones are a natural for Skype. You can walk around the room talking on the phone.
but surround sound on a pc IS available but generally not used because of it's requirements.
.. most homes do NOT have a specalized computer desk and room so you can place the rear speakers at the right location behind you. Hell most people that have surround sound at home for therei stereo and movies do NOT have it set up right and are missing out on a huge part of the sound field.
No not hardware, but space
Until they can eliminate the rear speakers (Carver Sonic Holography style) it will not catch on except with the people that desperately want it and are willing to sacrafice style for function.
I am hoping that PC audio would come to a standard. all PC audio talks in X way and Y way.. all the extra stuff can talk through the OpenAL interface.
much like a video card. all video cards give you a display without a driver. why cant audio do the same?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
.. and that's a company called Creative Labs and their patent portfolio.
Aureal, Nvidia and most recently id software are all firms that have fallen foul of Creative's desire to stifle innovation. Until someone challenges these patents, we will see few developments in PC audio which has stood still for many years.
For all intensive porpoises your a bunch of rediculous loosers
I've often heard this kind of story as proof of the fidelity of a computer sound arrangement. I don't really understand it. Why would anyone call the police over recorded gunfire? It's not as if recorded gunfire was a rarity in 1994, or the fifteen years preceeding it.
I'm thinking particularly of the Pulp Fiction soundtrack, which had a track opened with loud gunfire and dialogue from the movie.
Anyone who hadn't seen the film might easily think gangsters had come by and opened fire... if, that is, they'd never heard a stereo before. Who can't tell the difference between speakers and real sound?
Not to mention that movie soundtracks less often have rough, growly monsters moaning in the background and driving FM-guitar riffs. Imagine you're sitting in a courtyard and suddenly you hear the sound of Doom from an 8-bit soundcard. You've never played a video game, but you also aren't Amish. Would you phone the police or figure it was a B-Movie?
So if you really, truly swear that this isn't a friend of a friend story, the conclusion has to be that people will report almost anything as possible gunfire, not that your speakers were in any way unusual. Doom's soundtrack was garbage in garbage out where realism is concerned.
Not meant as a personal attack on you. I had a friend in Junior High who tried to lay this bullshit about people calling the cops regarding video game SFX on me and I never properly responded to him about it.
I don't know about you, but I use wireless sound all the time. Wires just don't have the frequency response you want, and the impedance-matching with your ear is generally terrible.
Keith says... any audio engineer will tell you a lot of audio design is "black magic" Well maybe not so much a myth if taken to mean that a lot of audio design is done by folks who don't know what the hell they are doing...
Now I'm the grandest Tiger in the Jungle!
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.
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.
The big new wave in PC audio should be to revitalize the programmable music synthesizers that died ten years ago. Let's start with open-source virtual MiniMoogs and ARP Odyssey clones that use GigaHertz PC CPU speeds to make instruments that sound as good as the originals.
Then let's make some serious musical instruments like additive synths like K5 clones along with real exciting and inexpensive controllers that plug into USB and legacy slots.
It's a shame that MIDI equipment never 'took off' in a big way in music equipment sales in the early 1990s. I believe that could have revitalized the retail music store business.
But all the MIDI items offered for sale in that initial market window were completely underdocumented, poorly implememented, terribly supported, and overpriced.
The big manufacturers (Roland, Yamaha, Kawai, and Korg) should have pooled together to offer a $10 MIDI interface for the PC and given away voice editor and sequencer software (including source code) for every model that they offered.
That would have been tough on all the little software companies selling $150 voice editors for synths that sold a total of 5000 units worldwide, but it would have energized the market for synths and tone modules to the level of guitars and amps.
Today all the $100 voice editor companies are gone and the advanced $1600 synths of 1990 are sold on eBay for $50-$200. The only software still available for them is Atari ST programs run on the PC through an emulator (the STeem emulator).
The rare MIDI auxiliary device (such as controller pedals or switcher) gets sold at an undervalued price due to the uncertainity of whether it can still be used.
If I had an extra million dollars and an extra twenty IQ points then I would make a serious attempt to revitalize the MIDI industry with open-source programs and equipment selling at 1/20th the cost that it did when the first MIDI wave ended ten years ago. The fact that the music equipment industry is still run by nitwits like Roland (who are still fighting attempts to open-source the MT-32 which was obsolete 15!! years ago) just fills me with despair.
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.
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso
Wireless PC speakers sounds fun (they still need power) but what we really want is a generalized IP based speaker architecture for the whole house, so all speakers can be sent a digital stream from any audio source. The current wired PC speakers woudl actually be the easiest ones to first bring into this system.
I wrote up a description of ethernet speakers and the ideal home A/V setup some time ago mostly to talk about the broadcast flag's effect on the design, but it's still the right way to go.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
It sounds like your driver has a whole system volume per active application support.
I want the full deal. Drivers should be able to tell which application is passing them a sound event and adjust the volume on the fly while blending the sound streams together. Any half decent sound card should be able to blend at least a few audio streams, so why not do it?
If not now, when?
So instead of wireless plug-in speakers, I propose sending a 5.1 digital audio stream over the electrical wires, buy 5 speakers, and each would have a D/A converter and can be set to play one of 5 channels. Easy as pie; one wire, no analog degredation because of long/cheap speaker cables, and no wireless interference.
I wonder how much bandwidth you could squeeze through electrical wiring. I bet it's quite a bit (no pun). So maybe you could have something like 20 channels, and you can tune any room of the house to the audio output of one of many sources. Since it would come in as digital, distance would not mean a loss of quality.
(And while we're at it, could we do video the same way???)
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.