TCP/IP Speakers

Fallen Kell writes "From the anouncement, "Polk Audio LCi-IP Ultra High Performance In-Wall/ In-Ceiling Loudspeakers are the world's first active Internet Protocol-ready Loudspeakers. They were created for IP networked systems such as the ground-breaking NetStreams DigiLinx system but also provide vast convenience and performance benefits when used in analog systems. Integrated digital amplifiers eliminate remote amplifiers connected via hundreds of feet of lossy, performance-robbing speaker wires." I had the great pleasure of having a demo on September 16th, 2005 of these speakers. The ability of connect to a wired network for sending the audio stream is simply amazing and wonderful innovation in the audio world."

Comments

Audiophile pish

[hedge_death_shootout]

These speakers sound better when you use gold CAT5 cable.

Re:Audiophile pish

[Anonymous Coward]

And they would sound even better if those all-your-senslessly-spent-VC-money-are-belong-to-u s start-ups would stop getting away with unworkable vapourware products (*cough* latency *cough*).

Re:Audiophile pish

[kfg]

Don't forget the little arrows on 'em to tell the bits which way to go.

I'll also be offering my own propriatary technology which filters the datastream to make sure the 1s are all inline with the direction of travel. 1s going through crosswise is the leading cause of signal degradation.

Rigourous highly subjective tests (remember, in Audio World objectivity is a Bad Thing) in my own lab allow me to say that I can say the improvement in all sorts of silly word parameters is astounding. Oh, and "Quantum Flux!"

You can't leave out Quantum Flux Technology if you wish to be taken at all seriously. This High Tech Deep Juju(tm) after all.

I'm working on a series of Internet Ready acoustic treatments for your listening room too, stay tuned to this channel. Oh sure, you thought Digital Ready should cover it. Silly boy. How would I be able to afford a villa in the Cayman Islands if that were the case?

KFG

Re:Audiophile pish

[Waffle Iron]

The other thing to consider is that you'll need a relatively large tower case and a beefy PS in your system in order to accommodate the vacuum tube-based NICs. Those things are big and hot, and most use two or three PCI slots.

Re:Audiophile pish

[ettlz]

Fuck your Quantum Flux Technology, I've got Quatum Optical loudspeakers with a 2 TB dynamic range and frequency response up to 6,8 GHz.

Re:Audiophile pish

[Jeff DeMaagd]

You could add that on top of the special audio resonator disc that adds "warmth" to the audio, simply by sticking it to the back of the amp. It only looks like a simple wooden disc, but I swear, it cleans up all my audio problems!

Re:Audiophile pish

[BushCheney08]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't the magnets in the speakers affect the orientation of the bits as they travel through the wire? There's gotta be something that can take care of this little problem...

Re:Audiophile pish

[Davin811a]

Laugh all you want, but the only amplifier I will connect to my sound card is a Dynaco stereo 70. I use a pair of them for four-channel. They are really great for the low end on movies.

Re:Audiophile pish

[Anonymous Coward]

You can achieve the Dynaco sound effectively and cheaply by stuffing wool socks in your ears. Try Mesa Barons next time, you piker.

Re:Audiophile pish

[Junior J. Junior III]

I always wondered what a ping sounds like.

Re:Audiophile pish

[Anonymous Coward]

The question has to be, how do they manage to get the timings of all the audio to come out in sync? If they don't, it'll potentially throw the order of the channels off and bugger up the sound stage...

Re:Audiophile pish

[Mr.Progressive]

Is this what you're talking about?

Re:Audiophile pish

[muggz1250]

1st post. ROTFLMAO, serious LOL

Re:Audiophile pish

[Anonymous Coward]

Join the Navy?

Re:Audiophile pish

[scotch]

onomatopoeia much? Or maybe that's the joke, and I'm the dumbass.

Re:Audiophile pish

[Jeremy Erwin]

On some cables, the arrows do (allegedly) serve a purpose. If a pre-amp and a subwoofer are both grounded, a distinctive, quite audible 60 Hz hum can be heard. Supposedly, the arrow laden cable is only grounded at one end (the pre-out), breaking the ground loop

Re:Audiophile pish

[klubar]

I once saw an advertisement for an audio CD player that used a heavy flywheel to ensure accurate rotational speed. Of course, the read rate of a CD player is entirely controlled by the clock and a stable rotational speed has almost nothing to do with quality. It's nice to know that it doesn't take much to separate an audiophile and his (or her) money.

Re:Audiophile pish

[0m3gaMan]

The home audio industry (and to a great extent, pro as well) can be summed up as:

Whatever newfangled, over-hyped technology (x) tacked onto (n) existing hardware = more marketable snake oil for the gullible audiophile market. More fodder for the magazines and something to blab about at CEDIA.

This was explained to me by a marketing manager at one such DSP/audio company almost ten years ago.

Nothing's changed.

Re:Audiophile pish

[Jeremy Erwin]

a cd player does need an accurate clock, so not every tweak can be dismissed out of hand.. However, many of these designs seem to be taken from the turntable crowd, where claims such as

Why yes! Mounting your turntable on a isolation platform will improve your sound

are not all that far removed from reality. An idiot could understand. The needle vibrates in response to a sound. Outside vibrations add noise to the signal. If the record is too slow, or too fast, the pitch of the sound is off. As soon as you enter the digital realm, those simple minded concepts about vibrations make less of a difference, and an audiophile needs to know about digital signal theory to make smart buying decisions. IIRC Gibbs Phenonemon is the latest evil to be recognized by vinylphiles.

Re:Audiophile pish

[dmaxwell]

IIRC Gibbs Phenonemon is the latest evil to be recognized by vinylphiles.

The vinylphiles may have point there. I wouldn't any Gibbs on my equipment either. Be it Andy, Barry, Maurice, or Robin, I don't wan't it going through my speakers. 100% Pure Evil.

Re:Audiophile pish

[Technician]

Who cares if they sound better with gold CAT5 cable. I care that it does not give any specifications other than some in wall mounting information and the grill is paintable.

A real audiophile is interested in sweep tests, crossover distortion, dispersion pattern, resonances, and other sound coloration problems. I just don't see some in wall speakers having as good of a sound as a good pair of studio monitors.

One provides dispersion plots and frequency response graphs. The other won't even spec the frequency response.

Re:Audiophile pish

[Anonymous Coward]

$ ping slashdot.org | cat > /dev/audio

Sounds kind of like a timer.

Re:Audiophile pish

[Jobastion]

I should point out that they only need to move a few trace lines on a certain motherboard to make that a reality. http://usa.aopen.com/products/mb/ax4b-533Tube.htm/

Caveats

[dada21]

I couldn't load TFA from my PDA, so take with that knowledge:

Remote digital speakers are a great solution for lowfi and mid i systems, but true audiophiles will not accept them.

Integrated amplifiers greatly reduce customizing, additional ADCs and DACs reduce resolution, increase the noise floor and change the sound.

Also, IP isn't my favored priority stream transport. I'd recommend a separate network for sound and I'd be weary of any delays incorporated in the IP transport. Think ping times! Also, encoding with the ADC does not include encapsulation into an IP packet, which can lead to worse lip-sync problems. Even 20ms delay makes me crazy (~1 frame). Of course, if its digital all-the-way, things can look brighter.

But a start is a start. Here's to hoping it continues to improve. Polk has a decent hifi range and a great R&D team. If anyone can find a better solution, its them.

Re:Caveats

[laptop006]

Yes, but power over AES/EBU has yet to be standardised ;-)

On a serious note true "audiophiles" would often consider the equipment in a mastering studio crap and unacceptable. (For those who arn't in music recording mastering is the final stage in preperation of a recording for duplication of all kinds, and mastering studios are generally the best acoustic spaces with the best equipment that money can buy).

Re:Caveats

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

true audiophiles will not accept them.

You misspelled audio poseur...

Most of these "true audiophiles" are the kind who swear by valve amps, separate elements stereo systems and expensive gold cables. The truth is, there's no reason why well-designed TCP/IP-based speakers would be less good than analog ones, especially over 2m from the amplifier.

Re:Caveats

[jcr]

true audiophiles will not accept them.

Do you mean true audiophiles, or the clowns who buy power cables for a grand?

-jcr

Re:Caveats

[sribe]

Also, IP isn't my favored priority stream transport. I'd recommend a separate network for sound and I'd be weary of any delays incorporated in the IP transport. Think ping times! Also, encoding with the ADC does not include encapsulation into an IP packet, which can lead to worse lip-sync problems. Even 20ms delay makes me crazy (~1 frame).

What are you babbling about? Ping times on my home network run about 50 microseconds, 1/400th the length of time that would make you crazy.

Re:Caveats

[dada21]

My brother owns a recording studio, and mastering suites vary greatly in quality. Nowadays, mastering isn't about source transparency but about sounding good across every playback system. Mastering suites are optimized to give an accurate rendition but with walkman and car stereo and home audio output considered.

I have had a few "audiophile" systems in my life, but the lack of quality source material mastered for neutrality made it a wasted venture.

Re:Caveats

[Anonymous Coward]

It allready exists people. Nothing new.
It's called PeakAudio (or Cobranet)

Upto 96KHZ audio streaming over ethernet. Integrated handling of delays caused by the network so every speaker device is able to produce the output at the same time, thus preventing echo-ing problems.

It's mainly used in very big spaces, like stadiums or trade-show halls.

Re:Caveats

[jupiter909]

Some points.

The Audio in this system is going one way, streaming-device -> amp-speaker-rig, it is not a two way stream. Even if it had 10000ms delay, once playing it would be constant audio. You are thinking of audio delay in terms of a two way real time communications system or live peformance where delay can not be tolerated. This a a high end system for listening pleasure.

You also state that more ADCs and DACs reduce resolution, that is indeed true, however this system only has one stage. If one has a WAV or MP3 and it is steaming down the Ethernet cable, it is digital all the way till it reaches that ONE DAC in the amp-speaker-rig.

I would assume this system would be for people that like having music in all the rooms of their house and only want one central control station.

Re:Caveats

[dada21]

Introduce video. Delays matter.

Re:Caveats

[wik]

You're right about the delay if you're only concerned about one speaker. If you have two or more speakers, you'll need more precise control over each speaker's delay.

10000ms delay would also be bad if you are trying to watch and listen to TV with this system.

Re:Caveats

[Reverberant]

Integrated amplifiers greatly reduce customizing, additional ADCs and DACs reduce resolution, increase the noise floor and change the sound.

That may be the perception, but in many cases (but not all), it's wrong. Integrated amps allow the manufacturer to to cutomize the amp for the specific driver which can greatly improve the performance of the overall speaker. for example:

• the amp in the Sunfire sub (which is rated for 2kW, but doesn't actually deliver that kind of power to the speaker because of the back EMF properties of the speaker magnet - any other amp would be eaten alive), and
• the BeoLab 5 integrated amp (I've written about the BeoLab 5 before).
• Heck, even if you hate Bose speakers, try listening to externally-amplified Acoustimass-series speakers, and compare them to the internally-amp'd models - the self-amplified models sound much better.

Re:Caveats

[starman97]

Netstreams is not just sending the music data down the wire like a Telnet session,
they're doing a lot of time management and synchronization as well.
http://www.netstreams.com/Documents/StreamNet%20Te chnology.pdf
Note that this is room-room delay, not stereo left-right jitter,
1ms there would be intolerable. Anything more than 50uS is probably discernable
by a trained listener with an audio test program. The average listener
might be able to hear 500uS phase shift L-R, but I think it'd only
show up in headphone listening.
After all, the speed of sound is 1100ft/S in air, that means a 1ms delay is
equivalent to 1 ft difference in speaker placement. 100uS is about 1-3/8"
As long as it isnt jittering around by +/-50uS on a frame-frame basis I doubt
even an audiophile could tell in a double-blind test.

Re:Caveats

[hackstraw]

Even 20ms delay makes me crazy (~1 frame).

To put it another way. 20ms is about the same as moving a speaker about 20 feet. That should be pretty clear to anybody how significant that is.

Re:Caveats

[dnoyeb]

Lets start out with THE most important issue. Latency, as you pointed out. The sound will have to be reproduced with almost 0 delay. Or at the least the delay will have to be coordinated between speakers in order to get the stereo effect. Let alone surround sound. However, for a home network system there is really no reason for delay. Well unless you are using VOIP and playing games etc. on the network at the same time. You will get a chance to see if you are really getting max throughput. That is throughput without delay.

Im not sure i agree with you on the DACs. You will have a seperate DAC for each audio channel anyway. It does not matter if the DAC is all part of a single larger DAC or not. But its true that now you introduce new voltage regulators and components which will increase the overall cost.

Also, we already have remote digital speakers. amphony has some. They are digital RF, but they are remote. Different transport, but same principle. I have a pair of remote speakers that are RF but are not digital. They sound OK, but there is so much RF problems I dont have a chance to evaluate the reproduction quality...

Re:Caveats

[Halfbaked Plan]

It's fairly important to acknowledge that there are actual audiophiles out there who do know what they're talking about.

The fact that there are charlatans, too, shouldn't come as a surprise. I've hated 'stereo store salesmen' since back in my youth when those smug f*cks always had an attitude to cop when I came in the store needing audio connectors.

To write off the whole 'audiophile' community is to buy into the shit that certain sales-types want us to believe. In fact there IS such a thing as High Fidelity, and it isn't just sales numbers and/or a table printed in the manual that comes with junk components from Japan.

Re:Caveats

[hyc]

What delays are incorporated in the IP transport? And why are you even talking about IP as a stream transport? IP isn't a transport at all, it's a network layer, and its performance is pretty much dominated by the underlying media layer. If you had an IP speaker and a PC transmitter on two opposite ends of a crossover ethernet cable, there would be no switching delays, and wire propagation speed is the same as for analog cable. In fact you can deliver the data several times faster than realtime and let the speaker buffer it and play it back at realtime with its own jitter-free clock. Thinking that there may be delays just because they use IP is downright ignorant.

Of course, to me what doesn't make sense here is the use of a bidirectional communications network for what is obviously a unidirectional job. Unless you plan to mount microphones in each speaker so they can report back balance and room delay characteristics back to the central console. That would be a smart use of technology, but I don't see anybody doing that.

Re:Caveats

[laptop006]

Fair point, I guess I'm lucky to know some of the best ones going (google fatnsassy mastering for one of the not so good)

Re:Caveats

[Directrix1]

Yes, because that 50 microsecond delay is no match for the 29.97 frames per second on screen.

Re:Caveats

[NormalVisual]

I don't buy into the ridiculous claims some people make regarding cables, but tube (valve) amps *do* sound noticeably different from solid-state in that their distortion characteristics are different, as any electric guitar player can tell you. A tube amp usually won't have better total harmonic or intermodulation distortion numbers than a solid-state amp, but the distortion sounds better and is often perceived as "warmth".

Re:Caveats

[Anonymous Coward]

"I couldn't load TFA from my PDA"
You host Slashdot on your PDA?

Re:Caveats

[Trinn]

I believe the reason for using ethernet & tcp/ip is that they are ubiquitous at this point. Almost everyone who would even be remotely considering this sort of technology already has the equipment or at least the understanding to run an ethernet network. Using any other sort of bus/network would likely be a lot more expensive and require the manufacturing of all new hardware and cabling. Ethernet has become a commodity to the point where on ebay you can find lots of 10 10/100 ethernet pci cards for like $40(US).

Re:Caveats

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, encoding with the ADC does not include encapsulation into an IP packet, which can lead to worse lip-sync problems. Even 20ms delay makes me crazy (~1 frame).

You cannot notice a 20ms delay. Repeat. You cannot notice a 20ms delay. You are either deluded or an outright liar if you claim you can.

Re:Caveats

[jafac]

Integrated amplifiers greatly reduce customizing,

Presumably, one could either modify the signal at the source prior to sending it down the TCP/IP stack (which - I guess, would mean either a D->A->C conversion? - or some kind of digital trickery I'm not aware of) or maybe configuration info for the Amp could be sent to the remote amplifiers over TCP/IP as well. I assume someone at Polk is working this, because if you're running CAT5 to ceiling mounted speakers, you don't want to have to get on a ladder to adjust eq and volume.

Re:Caveats

[kklein]

This problem killed my band. We had a very solid demo that sounded incredible in the million-dollar studio, but once the stuff was played on a car stereo or home system, it sounded thin and crappy. We fought over it for a few days and then my guitarist called it quits and my synth/drummer lost interest and everything fell apart.

Fucking audiophile shit.

I have done all recording work since on decidedly mid-grade equipment ever since.

Re:Caveats

[Anonymous Coward]

Even 20ms delay makes me crazy (~1 frame).

Wow! That means you were always sitting in front in the classroom - 20ms is just under 7m distance...

Re:Caveats

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd be weary of any delays incorporated in the IP transport.

I know, that network latency really makes me feel tired too..

I think you mean WARY not WEARY

Re:Caveats

[AwaxSlashdot]

Even 20ms delay makes me crazy (~1 frame).

If the delay is constant, just delay your video by the same amount !

Re:Caveats

[rxmd]

Even 20ms delay makes me crazy (~1 frame).

To put it another way. 20ms is about the same as moving a speaker about 20 feet. That should be pretty clear to anybody how significant that is.

Real audiophiles listen to their music underwater.

Re:Caveats

[arose]

Are junk components from other countries better?

Re:Caveats

[ArbitraryConstant]

"Also, IP isn't my favored priority stream transport. I'd recommend a separate network for sound and I'd be weary of any delays incorporated in the IP transport. Think ping times! Also, encoding with the ADC does not include encapsulation into an IP packet, which can lead to worse lip-sync problems. Even 20ms delay makes me crazy (~1 frame). Of course, if its digital all-the-way, things can look brighter."

Worse than that, you're relying on the overall system to be synchronized. The enthusiasts that would care about quality enough to use this are the same ones that set up the positions of the speakers based on the wavelengths of the sound that they're listening to.

You'd have to have the speakers time-synchronized to substantially less than a millisecond and buffer the sound.

Re:Caveats

[Doppler00]

Integrated amplifiers greatly reduce customizing, additional ADCs and DACs reduce resolution, increase the noise floor and change the sound.

If most people are using this to say listen to audio CD's (or ever worse, 128kbps mp3's) then there really shouldn't be a problem. I'm not sure how these speakers work, but if they are IP based, in theory you should be able to have the stream perfectly digital until they reach the speakers. At which point, you only have a single DAC, which in theory should reduce noise since no analog signal is traveling accross hundreds of feet of cable.

My assumption is speakers like this will be great for home music systems where you can put speakers in multiple rooms and just use the same IP network as the restof your house. This could save lots of money not having to have a bunch of home runs of audio cables.

Think ping times!
If your local LAN has latencies greater than 5ms, there is something very wrong with your network switch. Heck, I can get ping times of less than 10ms for servers located on the internet.

Re:Caveats

[AuMatar]

If you can't give numbers to the difference, then the difference doesn't exist. This "warmth" doesn't exist. Its the same thing as the gold cabling.

Re:Caveats

[JesseL]

But isn't the amp used with an electric guitar essentially part of the instument and fundamentally different from an amplifier used for playing back pre-recorded audio?

The guitarist is choosing the sound he wants to produce and so may prefer a certain kind of distortion.

The person listening to a recording will want to minimize the distortion introduced by his own equipment and hear the music with the best fidelity to the original he can acheive?

Re:Caveats

[alienw]

Sound travels approximately 30cm in one millisecond. Which means that even moving your head slightly will introduce significant delays. Unless you listen to your music sitting very rigidly with your head positioned _exactly_ between the speakers, I don't think you need to worry about millisecond delays.

Re:Caveats

[dada21]

I disagree. CD's output is digital. But you have to encode that continuous digital output (44.1khz--192khz) into an IP stream of packets. After transport, you need to confirm that packets are received in order, and decode these IP packets back into a stream that the DAC coverts to analog to amplify.

This takes time. It also needs hardcore syncing and you can't afford to lose any packets.

If its a 2 speaker audio only system on a dedicated network, no problem. Throw in 8 audio channels and the need to sync to video, I can foresee problems.

Re:Caveats

[Jeremy Erwin]

You cannot notice a 20ms delay. Repeat. You cannot notice a 20ms delay. You are either deluded or an outright liar if you claim you can.

And so the man with one ear speaks.

I have two ears, and my brain uses millisecond differences to provide me with a "three dimensional" model of my auditory environment. It's a pretty neat mutation.

Re:Caveats

[dada21]

Gold plating, thoug , does help. Copper is a better conducter than gold but corrodes easily leading to possible noise in the connection made evident from vibrations in the room.

I have done testing A/B between 10 different cables and there was a noticeable "air" in the $$$ilver cables but I wouldn't have paid for them.

I pay more for good cabling for 3 reasons:

1. Cut to custom length
2. High quality build/assembly
3. Warranty and trade-in value

Re:Caveats

[dada21]

More reverb and delay :)

My brother always listens to music after mastering on a car stereo, ipod and boombox. Powered monitors are unusually bass heavy it seems, which causes the source to be light on the low end.

Re:Caveats

[AK Marc]

It's fairly important to acknowledge that there are actual audiophiles out there who do know what they're talking about.

And they don't spend $1000 for speaker wire. The people that pay $1000 for speaker wires don't do it because they love the sound. They do it because they have money to burn and they want to be able to tell people they paid $1000 on speaker wires and that it makes them better than other people.

junk components from Japan.

Why the racism? It doesn't make you sound like a pure audiphile. It makes you sound like an elitist that doesn't care about the sound, but the exclusivity. I'm not sure if that is the case, but I am sure that is the impression you are giving.

Re:Caveats

[legirons]

"Do you mean true audiophiles, or the clowns who buy power cables for a grand?"

When you copy MP3 files across a network, they often sound better if you replace the capacitors in your NIC with audio-quality ones.

Re:Caveats

[hyc]

Pure digital effects processors have been around for ages. You can do all the eq / volume / balance adjustments you want totally in the digital domain.

A lot of folks seem pretty skeptical about these things working. I'm sure they'll work fine, I'm just skeptical about their value. What do you have to do to set the IP address of one of these things? If you set up a home theater with 6 remotes in the theater room, plus a couple more scattered around the house, soon you start having to learn to be a real IP network manager. What kind of OS is on the controller, does it use a web server to provide you a configuration interface? It obviously needs to have some amount of (NV)RAM on it to work, what happens when somebody hacks the servers?

"Yeah, I had my firewalls set up and anti-virus stuff on my PCs, but some damn worm got into my speakers and started flooding spam all over the place..."

Re:Caveats

[Tony Hoyle]

Gold cabling makes the problem *worse* by increasing resistance at the connectors.

The connectors on pretty much all hifi gear is *not* gold, so you have a transition between two different metals. Even if you get some uber hifi with gold connectors what's going on inside.. gold internally? I guess not... same problem transferred elsewhere.

As far as air in the silver cables... you've fallen for the 'oxygen free' one as well I see. No cable is going to corrode in your living room, unless you happen to live on a boat.

Re:Caveats

[Tony Hoyle]

Nah... everyone uses DHCP these days. Futzing around with IP addresses is something geeks do, not non-techie users. No NVRAM needed either.

I'd guess the transmitter doesn't care about which IP they're on and does a broadcast for them so it can find them... heck, they may even use multicast to broadcast the sound... then the speakers don't even *need* an IP address.

Re:Caveats

[ryanov]

$40? Try $5 at CompUSA most of the time.

Re:Caveats

[petermgreen]

BS it just means the numbers usually used to measure performance don't show up the difference.

IIRC the difference between tubes and most solid state cuircuitry is in the order of the harmonics. i think its even harmonics for solid state and odd harmonics for valve cuircuitry but i may have misremembered.

Re:Caveats

[Trinn]

$5 for 10 cards? wow...(not intending to be an asshole if you just did misread what I said). Thats...insane...if its what you meant.

Re:Caveats

[Rosonowski]

Only 50 cents a peice? Is that before or after the rebates? =p

Re:Caveats

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of these "true audiophiles" are the kind who swear by valve amps,

For stereos, solid state is great, but when it comes to guitar amps, it simply has to be tube. The textures and warmth produced by a tube amp have yet to be accurately reproduced by a solid state amp, because is the imperfect design of tubes that make them sound the way they do. Quite simply I can pick out what amp and at times even what brand of tube the guy is using just be listening to it. If I know what amp and brand of tubes he's using, I can even go as far as to tell what brand/model of pickup he's using in his guitar! But, I am a guitar player and have tuned into such things.

Unfortunately, the majority of the population today doesn't have an ear for that stuff (or are just tone deaf) and hence we that that CRAP on the radio called New Rock... which is mostly just that... crap. Solid state guitar amps, bad singers, and musicians who can just barely call themselves that.

Re:Caveats

[dmaxwell]

It is a quantifiable phenonenom. When solid state devices are overdriven , the tops and bottoms of the waveforms are sharply clipped off. The result resembles square waves. When tube devices are overdriven, the tops and bottoms of the waveforms take on a rounded "squashed" appearance. Both of these effects can easily be seen on o-scopes and heard by not particularly discerning ears. The distortion produced by overdriven tube equipments sounds more pleasant and accounts for the "warmth".

If we are talking about correctly designed playback equipment being operated properly, there is no audio quality reason to prefer one over the other. Clipping only occurs when an amplifier cannot amplify a signal further. This is not the regime you want your home stereo equipment to be operating in. Tube playback equipment that is not particularly linear (the amplification curve of indifferently designed tube equipment is gently "S" shaped) can sound "warm" even when not overdriven. I'd rather leave how the audio should sound to the artist and trust my equipment to accurately reproduce the artist's intention. Other than basic adjustments like volume or compensating for speakers that don't have a very good low or high end, I don't want my stereo coloring the sound for me.

If we are talking about playing music rather than mere playback, then tube amps have considerably more merit to them. A guitar player may intentionally choose to overdrive his amp or preamp as a way of altering timbre. Tube guitar amps are even set up to allow control over when and how this overdrive occurs. Typically, this will done in a preamp rather than the final amps as any device in the overdrive state is running very hot and using more power. For that matter, even solid state guitar amps can be intentionally overdriven although the idea is to intentionally introduce harshness rather than warmth.

Re:Caveats

[Anonymous Coward]

In the system you describe, when there are multiple speakers, there will be multiple clocks. There is no such thing as two perfectly identical clocks, so clock skew will be inevitable and the audio will go in and out of phase.

Re:Caveats

[caluml]

Mine is even simpler: dd if=/dev/dsp | nc foo.host.com -p1500....?

Re:Caveats

[hyc]

Remember, I was talking about a home theater system.

That means multi-channel. That means you can't just broadcast to a single broadcast address. That means you have to configure the speakers so they know which channel they're on. They *could* use a hardcoded multicast group, and embed the channel ID in the audio data, but that would be inefficient and would require faster processors in each speaker, because they would have to sift through all the data to parse out the audio packets that are just meant for them. And hardcoding a single multicast address is a bad idea.

Re:Caveats

[ArbitraryConstant]

"Sound travels approximately 30cm in one millisecond. Which means that even moving your head slightly will introduce significant delays. Unless you listen to your music sitting very rigidly with your head positioned _exactly_ between the speakers, I don't think you need to worry about millisecond delays."

I wouldn't worry about it, but I know people that do.

I think it has more to do with correctly positioning the nodes and anti-nodes of the interference pattern.

Re:Caveats

[cloudmaster]

That's not racism - the most popular junk components simply come from Japan. There was nothing said about how all junk components come from Japan, or how all components that come from Japan are junk. Why the "looking for racism everywhere"?

Re:Caveats

[jericho4.0]

It is quantifiable, and anyone can hear it. It is a form of distortion though, similar to vinyl, so it's arguable why you would want that happening in your stereo.

In a guitar amp, it's a different story...

Re:Caveats

[mpaque]

Do you mean true audiophiles, or the clowns who buy power cables for a grand?

* YES *

Re:Caveats

[DAldredge]

Being an audiophile isn't about the music.

Re:Caveats

[Mateito]

The Audiophile appreciates how music sounds on a high-watt system that's driven purely in the linear response region, has inperceptable distortion, crosstalk and noise, has a frequency reponse from 15Hz-22kHz that need not be flat, but must be pleasing to his ear.

The Audiophile understands that a great system starts with the speakers and works back to the source.

The Audiophile understands that spending time moving his speakers and furniture around the room will give you the best bang-for-buck improvement in sound.

The Audiophile understands that the difference between a CD player worth $200 and one worth $2000 is not as important as the difference between a set of speakers worth $200 and that worth $2000 - doubly so if you are keeping it digital until the tuner.

The Audiophile knows that the person who spend $1000 on each speaker cable is a wanker, while he calculates the per meter-resistance of his quality OFC cables and ensures that the paths to the drivers are as close as possible.

The Audiophile understands that a sub-woofer should not felt not heard. If its not SUBsonic, its just a woofer.

The Audiophile looks at the BOSE Lifestyle system with the contempt it deserves.

The Audiophile doesn't claim that the response of vinyl records is superior, but can appreciate the imperfections of the recording media as an important part of the whole listening experience.

The Audiophile doesn't store his CDs in the freezer, nor drawn on them with green texta.

Re:Caveats

[jupiter909]

Given that the system uses RCA or Eth. I would assume one would have speakers to a TV system hooked up directly using RCA if one was worried about delays.

The idea of having a Eth sound-system is great because you need just switch/hub/cables to wire a house. You need not worried about running long lengths of audio cables which is where the noise comes in. Even with all the speakers in all the rooms playing the same song at the same time, the delays you would percieve are that of the sounding bouncing around a room then coming out to the next room. These systems though are normally used for many rooms each playing different music from one central control point, or in the case of it being Eth, it could have any device attached to the network as a player.

Re:Caveats

[frostw]

The person listening to a recording will want to minimize the distortion introduced by his own equipment and hear the music with the best fidelity to the original he can acheive?

At last, somebody not talking bollox. Well done.

Re:Caveats

[NormalVisual]

You obviously don't know what you're talking about, and any electrical engineer that has experience with both tube and transistor audio amplification applications would concur. Tubes distort more than transistors do, but the distortion produced by tubes is mostly even-order harmonics (the signal is clipped, but will have very rounded edges) and offers a pleasing sound in small amounts (the aforementioned "warmth"). Larger distortions produce a characteristic "fuzz" tone which has been the basis for the sterotypical "rock guitar" sound for around 50 years now. Overdriven transistors generally clip the signal very sharply at whatever the supply voltage is, so instead of producing a smooth, musical even-order distortion, they produce distortion that contains both even and odd-order harmonics and sounds much harsher. It is possible to produce a solid-state circuit that will somewhat simulate the characteristics of an overdriven tube, but as can be seen on any spectrum analyzer, the tone isn't the same.

If you don't believe me, grab an oscilloscope or a spectrum analyzer and compare the output of both tube and transistor circuits yourself.

Re:Caveats

[NormalVisual]

But isn't the amp used with an electric guitar essentially part of the instument and fundamentally different from an amplifier used for playing back pre-recorded audio?

Most definitely, and in playback/sound reinforcement situations you want the cleanest amplification possible. Having said that, no amplifier is perfect, and tube amps tend to distort in a manner that is more pleasing to the ear, even though the actual amount of total harmonic distortion is usually higher than that offered by a transistorized amp. Intermodulation distortion numbers are thus often higher for tubes as well, but owing to the even-order harmonic distortion, the intermod artifacts are generally not as objectionable as those produced in solid-state applications. Since both amps are going to distort to some degree, I'd prefer the amp that will sound better when doing so.

For me personally, the price premium for tube amps doesn't justify the (in my opinion *only*) better sound, when perfectly acceptable quality can be obtained for a fraction of the price from a transistorized amp that has sufficient headroom for whatever it is I'm listening to. Consequently, my Kenwood 100W stereo amp isn't going to be replaced by a high-end McIntosh anytime soon. :-)

Re:Caveats

[pomo monster]

Sure, but if all channels are delayed equally? I don't know if it would be unnoticeable, but it would definitely be much harder to tell.

Re:Caveats

[AK Marc]

That's not racism - the most popular junk components simply come from Japan. There was nothing said about how all junk components come from Japan, or how all components that come from Japan are junk. Why the "looking for racism everywhere"?

Then why single out just that one? There is popular junk from China, Germany, the USA, Taiwan, the UK, and all sorts of other places with electronics manufacturing. Picking only one is obviously singling them out. You think it is because they have a lot of junk components. I think that they have junk ratios no different than any other country that manufactures audio electronics, and that there has to be another reason. If it wasn't racism, why name a specific race?

Re:Caveats

[thesqlizer]

A grand?! HOLY COW!!

Wow--can you post a link where they can get be had that cheap?! I'd save a fortune. Just in time, too since I need some new cables for my Thunderclap 2000.

Re:Caveats

[iowannaski]

I'll agree that you are a pathetic piece of shit who can't even justify hos own existance.

The blatant small-moon-sized hole in your argument is that you assume that $20,000 speakers and $1000ccables are necesssary for "fatigue free" listening and other such mumbo jumbo.

I cannot impress this point strongly enough: You sir, are scum, and you should kill yourself immedietly to make the world a better place.

Re:Caveats

[AuMatar]

I've listened to demonstrations of this difference. Noone in the study heard a damned thing. The results followed placebo lines. Its bogus.

Re:Caveats

[jericho4.0]

Then we a disscusing a different thing.

Re:Caveats

[Nybble's Byte]

>I'll agree that you are a pathetic piece of shit who can't even justify hos own existance.

You, sir (I use the term very loosely), are a pathetic excuse for a human being. I don't have to justify my existence to you or anyone else, because given your boorish demeanor and purposely distorting what I posted to satisfy your own twisted ego, I really don't give a damn. Get over it, because I'm making a good income in spite of trailer trash like you. Your hateful words demonstrate you are a worthless troll. Maybe you should crawl back under that rock from whence you emerged until you learn to be tolerant of others whose views and experiences differ with yours, not to mention tastes and income.

Re:Caveats

[jcr]

Do you also sell new clothes to emperors?

-jcr

Re:Caveats

[unitron]

What the distortion caused by clipping sounds like may be important in guitar amps, but for audio re-production it's the sound of the amplification of below clipping level signals (normal operating range) by which the equipment is judged.

All audio amps add some distortion. Solid state devices tend to produce odd-number harmonics, and tubes produce even number (double the frequency, 4 times, etc.) harmonics. Since doubling or quadrupling the frequency is the same thing as producing the original note, only an octave or two higher, tube distortion is more "in tune" with the original signal.

Re:Caveats

[jcr]

I cannot impress this point strongly enough: You sir, are scum, and you should kill yourself immedietly to make the world a better place.

Oh, come on! The guy offers a service to people who give him their money willingly. You can't be a golden-ear wanker without people to take your money and stroke your ego. It may not be a job that you or I would be willing to do, but that doesn't mean that nobody should do it.

Now, if you want to argue that his customers should be strongly encouraged not to reproduce for the good of the species, I'll raise no objection.

-jcr

Re:Caveats

[unitron]

"It is a form of distortion though...so it's arguable why you would want that happening in your stereo."

It's not a matter of wanting it, it's choosing your poison. All amps add some distortion, tube or solid state, and you can have low or high (relatively speaking) distortion in either type, depending on quality. Some people find the distortion of tube-type re-producing equipment less objectionable than that of solid state type.

Re:Caveats

[LittleBigLui]

Then why single out just that one? There is popular junk from China, Germany, the USA, Taiwan, the UK, and all sorts of other places [...]

It's because of the alliteration. Junk from Japan. Crap from China, Garbage from Germany, Trash from Taiwan.

Re:Caveats

[Anonymous Coward]

1!Omgz somebody call the pc policE!1

oh wait they are already HEREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE?!

Re:Caveats

[unitron]

"...junk components from Japan."

C'mon. Japan outsourced all that stuff years ago.

Re:Caveats

[jcr]

Hey, I'll sell you all the thousand-dollar power cables you want. How many do you need?

-jcr

Re:Caveats

[dmaxwell]

Modern kit that has been well designed should not introduce perceptible distortion unless operated out of spec. The distortion levels of even moderately priced kit have been ridiculously low for years. As I pointed out in my earlier post, tube equipment that hasn't been designed for linearity will color the sound even when clipping is not involved. Tube equipment also tends to have fairly large transformers in the output stages. This too can color sound unless the amp's designer accounts for it. Some people like it but it isn't particularly correct unless maybe listening to really old recordings engineered with old tube gear in mind.

The harmonics you speak of are indeed a consequence of clipping either in a preamp or final stage. If a sine wave fundamental and successive odd-number harmonics are added to each other one at a time, the result will resemble a square wave more and more as each harmonic is added. Modern solid-state amps operating in the linear region of their power band should not introduce perceptible distortion. Of course, overly cheap solid state kit doesn't have the headroom to prevent this at more than low listening levels. There is no longer any such thing as cheap tube gear. If the same money is spent on solid state kit that is spent on tube kit, then even vs. odd distortion shouldn't enter into which amp is better. By the time you've spent that much money, you'll realize the room and the speakers make a much larger difference than what the amps are made of.

Incidentally, for those who like the sound of the old tube gear, you can buy line level tube amps that even let you control the amount of "warmth" in the sound. Unless the solid state finals you drive them with are cranked too high, the difference is imperceptible.

Re:Caveats

[cloudmaster]

When did I say that they have a lot of junk components? And WTF is your problem? "Why single out that one" - I dunno, maybe because it would take forever to list every single "junk" component in existance? Maybe becuase the guy was specifically talking about Sony, which is can also be referred to as a "Japanese junk component maker" because they make junk components and are probably somewhat proud of their location in Japan? In fact, I'll bet they'd be slightly offended if the were *not* associated with Japan. How about you list a specific popular piece of junk component manufacturer in Germany, one from Taiwan, and one from China. Kinda hard to think of one off the top of your head? I wonder if that's because there aren't any that are popular...

Seriously, fella, you're entirely too touchy to leave the house - what are you doing on the Internet? Are you one of those assholes whose entire reason for being is to look for ways take offense in everything and then moan about it?

Re:Caveats

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, some audiophiles DO still claim that nothing beats vinyl records, ignoring the limitations inherent in the medium. Whether these audiophiles represent most audiophiles or a subset of audiophiles is a question I don't know the answer to, but these people most certainly DO still exist. Take a look at http://www.elusivedisc.com/ for one web site that sells a lot of very expensive equipment designed specifically for vinylphiles. They do sell high end CDs too, but what they primarily push are very expensive turntables and accessories for such turntables.

Re:Caveats

[ryanov]

Oh, no; $5 apiece. Whoops! Can probably do better on eBay though, in bulk.

Re:Caveats

[ryanov]

Oh... IN lots of 10. I thought what you did is messed up the punctuation on that and meant 10/100/1000 or something like that. lots of and in lots of are hard to differentiate.

Re:Caveats

[AK Marc]

When did I say that they have a lot of junk components?
Well, you wrote:
the most popular junk components simply come from Japan.

I seem to equate "most popular" with "a lot of". If you disagree with my understanding of these plain English phrases, please explain it to me.

Maybe becuase the guy was specifically talking about Sony,

And could you point out where he said or implied that he was referring to Sony? Or is it because you hate Sony that you are suggesting that Sony was also on his mind?

Seriously, fella, you're entirely too touchy to leave the house - what are you doing on the Internet?

So, when one nationality is singled out as a problem, and I point out the fact that it is not necessarily a fair characterization, I'm all of a sudden too touchy to leave the house? I think you are having trouble with discussions with other people. You make up references to Sony that aren't there. You make up some offense that I had at the OP. You are just way off from what is really going on. Maybe you need to get out of your Mom's basement a little more.

Are you one of those assholes whose entire reason for being is to look for ways take offense in everything and then moan about it?

Are you one of those assholes that refers to minorities as "fucking niggers" and when someone complains, you say "I didn't mean any offense"?

Re:Caveats

[jcr]

Hit a nerve, did he?

-jcr

Speaker Hacking

[wenck]

Just wait until these things become common, and their owners connect them to a wifi network ...

Re:Speaker Hacking

[hedge_death_shootout]

Hmm. Those bloody students downstairs playing their loud music at all hours... on YOUR stereo.

Re:Speaker Hacking

[Anonymous Coward]

All your speaker are now belong to us!

Re:Speaker Hacking

[seymansey]

It won't be long until we have the first speaker virus, which starts shouting "GOATSE LOVERS!" rather loudly in an infinite loop.

Re:Speaker Hacking

[jdeluise]

Just think, we saw Symantec issue a complaint about Microsoft entering the anti-virus market on Windows. But here they can release Norton Anti-Virus 2006 Speaker Edition and bring in a new era of profits! Trouble is, it might bring the output to a crawl.....

Re:Speaker Hacking

[Dannon]

Oh, how I do wish this one dorm-neighbor of mine had had these... I would have so launched a DoS attack against him for playing his rap at all hours....

Re:Speaker Hacking

[mOdQuArK!]

first speaker virus, which starts shouting "GOATSE LOVERS!"

Or worse, starts playing random Britney Spears song clips. *shudders*

Re:Speaker Hacking

[kahanamoku]

They better get in quick.

they've missed their chance already on a PSP Virus Scanner!

Re:Speaker Hacking

[Anonymous Coward]

Cmdr Taco seems to think this a good idea. It sounds to me like a party line.
I've been misunderstood on this point before. It's not that I was interested in snooping on neighbours, they were there yacking and blocking my go at a phone call. That's thirty years ago. Hack is the keyword for those speakers...it needs to become something in its own right.

Apple Airport Express

[mysqlrocks]

Although not quite the same thing, I use an Apple Airport Express to stream music from my computer to my stereo system. It works pretty well and the sound quality is great. I'm not a hi-fi freak or anything, so I'm sure these speakers would be a lot better quality. However, for me the $120 for the Airport Express (which can also be used as a router, wireless access point, and USB print server) is a pretty good deal.

Re:Apple Airport Express

[mysqlrocks]

However, on second look, it appears that these speakers require a separate NIC and that NIC is not wireless. I'm not sure about this, but it appears it's only wired. A wireless option would be cool.

Re:Apple Airport Express

[warb]

This is close to what I want. I'd like a unit that sets up a sound device (on windowns) and streams the audio to a wired unit plugged into
my amp. That way I could use any music program (music match) not just itunes. Any suggestions?
Thanks.

Re:Apple Airport Express

[Anonymous Coward]

Assuming you have a decent amp, the airport is high quality if you use the optical connectors. The DAC in the airport won't be great, but according to reviews it's not garbage either, considering its cost. Stick to optical connectors and let the amplifier do the work if you can afford it.

One really annoying thing with itunes is its inability to stream more than one song. There's no reason why it can't control multiple airports, each receiving different music. E.g. my wife likes her music in the kitchen, I like mine in the office. Having our audio library on a linux server, controlled by itunes should let us set up out our playlists from a single machine. Neither CPU or networking bandwidths are an issue, just Apple's single user centric view of the universe.

Re:Apple Airport Express

[mysqlrocks]

Sure, check out this review:
http://www.g4tv.com/screensavers/features/50198/Re view_Network_Music_Players.html

Re:Apple Airport Express

[blah509]

Or you could a squeezebox (http://www.slimdevices.com/index.html) and keep the HiFi g

Re:Apple Airport Express

[Doc Ruby]

I use a $100 iPaq running madplay/uCLinux to tune in a 320Kbps MP3 stream from my shoutcast server to my stereo. Maybe sometime next year I'll be able to hack a used $100 iPod with TCP over FireWire to run Linux, and get the super little DACs upgraded. But it's nice to have components that I can mix and match, rather than just Polk's all-in-one beast. Although the convenience of dropping their ethernet speakers anywhere there's AC power, then remotely administering all their hifi features, is an attractive commercial proposition.

Re:Apple Airport Express

[warb]

Thanks. The Ruku M500 or M1000 http://www.rokulabs.com/products/soundbridge/index .php look like what I wanted.

Woot!

[TooMuchEspressoGuy]

Now when the guy three doors down blasts bad hip-hop that can be heard throughout the entire floor, he can do it more clearly!

Re:Woot!

[geekboy642]

Actually, yes. John Cage has done an adaptation of his "Four Minutes, Thirty-Three Seconds" to the Hip-Hop scene. Best hip-hop track I've ever heard.

Re:Woot!

[Anonymous Coward]

Now when the guy three doors down blasts bad hip-hop that can be heard throughout the entire floor, he can do it more clearly!

At least now you have the option to DDOS him.

Re:Woot!

[unitron]

"John Cage has done an adaptation of his "Four Minutes, Thirty-Three Seconds" to the Hip-Hop scene."

Years before hip-hop I used to drop samples from Cage's piece into the mix between records on the air, but the program director was so "nekulturny" that he couldn't tell the difference between that and dead air while I scrambled to get the next 45 cue'd up, so I had to stop. :-)

what the???

[maskedavenger]

What's the difference between running a heavy guage wire and cat5 to the speaker? Did anyone catch that not only do you have to buy the NIC separate, but also the power adapter (which MSRP is $800). This seems a bit of a novelty. And now I'm sure we're going to get hacking jokes, so insert them now!

Re:what the???

[gr84b8]

I think the difference is that many homes and businesses come pre-installed with cat5 cable to every room (or at least have already wired it up), so in those cases you WOULDN'T have to run cable. Its much less common that a house (or especially an office) is pre-wired for speaker wiring.

Point well taken, however, on the price point.

Re:what the???

[HappyClown]

There's no difference in terms of physical convinience, but potentially a big difference in terms of quality since the less distance an analogue signal needs to travel the better. Plus, high quality analogue speaker cable costs a *lot* more than cat5.

Re:what the???

[rcw-home]

I think the difference is that many homes and businesses come pre-installed with cat5 cable to every room (or at least have already wired it up), so in those cases you WOULDN'T have to run cable.

In those situations I would rather put an analog line-level balanced signal directly over the cat5, using whatever baluns and amplifiers I needed to accomplish that. It'd likely be cheaper, I wouldn't have to worry about latency or jitter, and as long as your amp's balanced inputs had common-mode rejection (pretty much all of them do) the twists in the cat5 would prevent picking up interference over long runs.

Re:what the???

[dana340]

these will likly have a larger audiance in the business world as opposed to the home sterio market. ficces can have cat5 for data and music, simplifying the costs of wiring the next cube farm you work in. who cares about latency on the elevator music they pump in anyway? who else will pay 800 for a PSU jsut for a speaker system.

Re:what the???

[poopdeville]

Plus, high quality analogue speaker cable costs a *lot* more than cat5.

No it doesn't. Copper wiring is cheap. The most expensive part would be quality connectors (just like cat5). Gold plated connectors might be a good idea, if only to avoid oxidation. But even those can be had cheap.

Re:what the???

[Halfbaked Plan]

I think he's referring to 'audiophile grade' speaker cable, which as we know is of specified purity, and the metallurgical components of which are tracable all the way back to the name and pedigree of the burro who hauled the copper ore out of the mine in Chile.

But now I'm being silly.

Re:what the???

[poopdeville]

:-)

I know to what he referred. Double-blind testing has shown that you'd be dumb to buy that snake oil when lamp cord is subjectively indistinguishable. I like to think of myself as a practical audiophile. If I can't tell the difference between two technologies in a double-blind test, I get the cheaper one. Shit, I could buy or build a new amplifier for what the GGP spends on speaker cable.

Re:what the???

[mpaque]

Copper wiring is cheap. The most expensive part would be quality connectors (just like cat5). Gold plated connectors might be a good idea, if only to avoid oxidation. But even those can be had cheap.

Heh. Not to a real 'Golden Ear' audiophile. Aeons ago, while in the service, I worked part time selling to audiophiles. It kept my family off food stamps. A good peaker cables and interconnects sale put food on the table for quite a while.

Here's an audiophile's cheap mass-market speaker cable, only $199 for 15 feet:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000 04Y2VO/102-9647861-9570554?v=glance

There are considerably higher priced custom cables, including a custom open busbar setup of certified monocrystalline oxygen free silver plated copper on glass standoff insulators, for around $200/foot.

Never mind that us mere mortals can't tell the difference between this stuff and a 50 cent roll of zip cord. A Golden Ear will claim to hear the difference, except in double-blind tests where the 'stress' of being under test will cancel out his abilities.

Re:what the???

[SteeldrivingJon]

"There are considerably higher priced custom cables, including a custom open busbar setup of certified monocrystalline oxygen free silver plated copper on glass standoff insulators, for around $200/foot."

My favorite are the cables you can buy which claim to use light as a special insulation. Yes, light. They're ridiculously expensive. Thousands of dollars, if I recall correctly. For speaker cables. With light-beam insulation.

DRM

[fiver]

An interesting development and one that brings us closer to the time when even your speakers can check if you have a license for content....

Re:DRM

[Halfbaked Plan]

I have Microsoft brand USB Speakers, which are from the Windows 98 era. Their only connection to the PC is the USB cable, and there's no DRM in them. There was a certain appeal back then to doing away with the sound card entirely, in the era where the growing pains of ISA-to-PCI were showing.

And there's some sort of Linux support for these speakers. Not that I've interacted with directly, but I think I remember trying a version of Mandrake where the speakers worked 'out of the box' without any fooling around on my part.

Re:DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly, I'm sure something like this was planned for palladium. I don't see the point myself, it still wouldn't close the analogue hole because you could tap the wires on the speaker and convert that back to line level. Most people wouldn't know how to do this but a device marketed to perform the trivial task could not be outlawed under the DMCA/EUCD because the signal has no copy protection at the point from which you take the feed ;-)

Re:DRM

[Chuqmystr]

An interesting development and one that brings us closer to the time when even your speakers can check if you have a license for content....

Or when the 5kript k1dd13 next door will be streaming PWNZ0R3D! All your speakers are belong to us! over your fancy-shmancy >$1400 speaker system ;-)

IP freely.

[Anonymous Coward]

"The ability of connect to a wired network for sending the audio stream is simply amazing and wonderful innovation in the audio world.""

So these speakers do for the audio world what the iLoo did for the...Oh, you know.

IP will give these no advantage at all.

[fishnuts]

They'll be heavier than non-powered speakers because they'll need to contain an integrated power supply, an amplifier, and a microcontroller to do the interfacing. It's completely useless to bring up the "lossy speaker cable" argument, because if you were going to spend the extra money and waste an extra power cable for powered speakers, you might as well just use standard analog speakers with XLR cables (which have been VERY well established as nearly noiseless and lossless for point to point audio distribution). You can reliably have a couple double-shielded XLR cables ran from your pre-amp to your self-powered speakers for less than having speakers that speak IP.

having multiple IP speakers on a network in the same room may also introduce phase offsets, since there's ALWAYS an inherent delay between receiving the network packets, decoding them, and sending the data off to DACs before the signal gets to the amplifier. Even a 2ms difference difference in delay/phase between two speakers in the same room is noticeable, and WILL screw up accurate stereo imaging. 2ms is not uncommon as a delay on an ethernet network.

Of course, mixing analog and IP speakers in the same room is right out.

Want the best audio quality, distance, noise-resistance for your speakers? fiber optic digital audio paths. end of story.

Re:IP will give these no advantage at all.

[Che*pB*st*rd]

They could always have some sort of internal timing feedback algo-rhythm to take care of any network delays.

Re:IP will give these no advantage at all.

[Anonymous Coward]

Want the best audio quality, distance, noise-resistance for your speakers? fiber optic digital audio paths. end of story.

I've always prefered S/P-DIF over coax. Mainly because it's cheaper, the electronics are much simplier, and it lacks the bling factor. The only disadvantage is that there's an electrical link between the two things. Which isn't really a big problem. Several companies now make active speakers that take digital coax straight in the back, the best of which I've seen or heard are the Meridian ones.

Re:IP will give these no advantage at all.

[carlislematthew]

You're right that XLR and existing technologies would be better for *highly* accurate stereo imaging. However, this is an in-ceiling speaker designed for rich geeks and their in-home audio systems. Stereo imaging does not work in these environments and they are often wired in mono. Imagine listening to The Beatles and their insane stereo imaging in your kitchen! Drums near the stove, and the guitar over by the fridge - doesn't work.

Mono is also how 99.9% of retail/hospitality locations are wired, even the high end ones where they spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on the installations.

Also, forget about audiophiles and whether they would like these speakers. Audiophiles will never install in-ceiling speakers, and if they do it's purely for "background music" purposes around the house.

I believe that this product is for the rich geek that wants to be able to utilize his already-CAT5-wired home and be able to show off to their other rich geek friends.

Re:IP will give these no advantage at all.

[fatboy]

I thought XLR was used for low level, balanced, audio signals.
For less loss on long speaker runs, I would use 600 ohm audio transformers.

Re:IP will give these no advantage at all.

[hackstraw]

they'll need to contain an integrated power supply

The power supplies are external and sold separately for $800 MSRP and can power 2 of the linked speakers or 4 of the lower end speakers here.

The XLR point is very valid. I don't understand why all of this "audiophile" high dollar equipment uses the lowest common denominator cabling is beyond me. The best analog speaker inputs are those "5 way binding posts" and the best analog intercomponent interconnect are those cheesy RCA cables. Real audiophiles (professionals) use things like speakon connections, balanced/unbalanced XLR cables, and the likes which are so much more reliable, easier to connect and disconnect, and don't cost that terribly much.

Want the best audio quality, distance, noise-resistance for your speakers? fiber optic digital audio paths. end of story.

So long as you like jitter. Actually, XLRs are being used for digital cables in the professional world as well.

Re:IP will give these no advantage at all.

[Jeff DeMaagd]

XLR is low level. If you are going to have "active" speakers, I think they are the ideal way to go.

Re:IP will give these no advantage at all.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only that, but you can run balanced lines further than cat5 without needing repeaters.
Even with mic level signals, 500m is not a problem.

Re:IP will give these no advantage at all.

[poopdeville]

Durr, this is for distributed installations. Weight is not a factor. Power loss is. Nobody who has speakers installed in their ceiling are going to expect an accurate stereo image anyway. And the technology scales up to large venues like stadia or theme parks. end of story.

Re:IP will give these no advantage at all.

[Varun Soundararajan]

No! "Internet" protocol will give definitive advantage. Heard it can stream p*r*o directly from the internet :)

Re:IP will give these no advantage at all.

[jacks0n]

and how will they sync the clocks in different speakers?

Re:IP will give these no advantage at all.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oddly enough, balanced lines are a bad idea for high fidelity as all audio equipment is unbalanced internally. This means you have to chuck an opamp or transformer on every input/output to balance it. Unless you get this exactly right, you end causing more distortion and noise than you remove. It's also more junk in the signal path.

I agree that RCA connectors are cheesy though.

PS yes there are some bits of kit like an altec 436c or wacky preamps that are internally balanced, but it's vanishingly rare nowadays.

Re:IP will give these no advantage at all.

[Viceice]

They'll be heavier than non-powered speakers because they'll need to contain an integrated power supply, an amplifier, and a microcontroller to do the interfacing. It's completely useless to bring up the "lossy speaker cable" argument, because if you were going to spend the extra money and waste an extra power cable for powered speakers, you might as well just use standard analog speakers with XLR cables (which have been VERY well established as nearly noiseless and lossless for point to point audio distribution). You can reliably have a couple double-shielded XLR cables ran from your pre-amp to your self-powered speakers for less than having speakers that speak IP.

Have you never heard of Power over Ethernet?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_over_Ethernet

Re:IP will give these no advantage at all.

[GoRK]

I don't know quite how much time difference you can have before you start having phase issues. I'm guessing that you have to be somewhat closer than twice the sample rate for it to really become a problem.. So 1/88,000th second. NTP has the capability to achieve this syncronocity over time, but somehow I doubt that the internal clocks in the devices have small enough drift to acutally ever quite 'get there'

Still, there are a couple of common clocks that we have not considered as possible sync sources:

1) Ethernet physical framing (Both speakers in the same room probably run off of the same switch)
2) AC power (This will be either in sync through the whole house or the two waves will be perfectly phase coupled enough to have a constant time delta)

I suspect that using one or both of these sources along with NTP you could sync speakers well enough to remove phase errors but I really have no idea how complicated the engineering required to do it would be. It does sound like a fun problem. Whether or not they have acutally done this with the product we are discussing is not really known. It would stand to reason that if they spent enough time figuring out it would appear on their marketing materials as it would be quite a feat.

Re:IP will give these no advantage at all.

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize that S/PDIF runs on both coax and TOSlink fiber?

Re:IP will give these no advantage at all.

[Anonymous Coward]

802.3af (Power over ethernet) is limited to 13W.

Re:IP will give these no advantage at all.

[really?]

Include a GPS receiver? :-)

Re:IP will give these no advantage at all.

[alienw]

Any decent piece of equipment will have an isolation transformer on the coax input, which eliminates any potential ground loop issues. And yes, using proper 75 ohm coax is a hell of a lot better than the ugly cheap hack known as Toslink.

Re:IP will give these no advantage at all.

[Jeremy Erwin]

LC265i-IP ($1450 each) = LC265i ($650) + 200 WPC amplifier + IP addressing.
LC80i-IP ($600 each ) = LC80i ($400) + 100 WPC amplifier + IP addressing

The speakers aren't terribly inexpensive, and one could argue that the geek premium isn't that high.

Why the bias against in-wall speakers?

Re:IP will give these no advantage at all.

[pboulang]

Clearly a maximum of 16.8 watts isn't enough to power speakers that have a 200 watt power supply. Why would you make that suggestion, especially with that arrogant attitude?

Re:IP will give these no advantage at all.

[Fallen Kell]

Actually, the imaging is what maked these so good. I myself was skeptical when I first saw them, but when I actually listened to them, the imaging was better then many floor-standers, let alone compaired to other in-walls that I have heard in the past. Part of it had to do with the fact that Polk Audio also has a cabinet designed to fit between the average stud length in homes. So it is really an enclosed cabnet with the correct volumn for the speakers. Yes it is extra, but you know what, the time savings it allows for custom installs and the improvement in sound more then make up for that added cost.

As for audio clarity, well, we have proven that time and time again that digital transmission is better then analog for signal integrety. The actual audio signal is what you want to transmit. In your standard speaker cables, transmitting the audio signal you have run into the resistance of the cable, the inductance of the cable, the capacitance of the cable and the easily injected noise of electro-magnetic fields which the cable passes thru. All of these will cause the signal to be altered. In a digital system such as the IP protocal, all transmissions are the pure signal, with no data loss and much more importantly, no data ADDED to the signal during the longest transmittion of the signal in any audio setup. What this translates into is less noise, less loss of power and a cleaner signal due to less interaction of inductance and capactitance in the cables.

Now the real advantage of a system like this. The controlling software. How long do you really think it will take for people to expand on things like this. For instance, take our hated/loved person, Mr. Bill Gates. He has a home which tracks the movements of people with-in it. Well, now the music that the person/persons were listening too can flow from room to room as the person/persons move around. Priority could be given, just like there is priority to environmental settings to temperature and lighting already. Approppriate stereo pairs could be chosen on the fly as you move about from place to place giving you a seemless listening experience while you still do other activities. Truely think about it.

Now as for 99% are wired in mono, well guess what. That goes out the door with the capabilities of this system. They are wired mono because it is impossible to wire them in stereo when you never know where the person will be. In those systems, they can not swap what inputs they use for the sound streams. Since now the controller is a piece of software that says send channel x to speaker y, the switching is as simple as a command on the computer. Again, tie in a location monitoring system with this and a whole new world opens up for ambient musical systems.

Re:IP will give these no advantage at all.

[Bios_Hakr]

For your first point, I think power over ethernet could help solve that problem. Of course, your ultimate goal is to have fully wireless speakers, so PoE is just a stopgap.

Your second problen can be solved by accurate network timing. Instead of sending the sound when it is needed, send it a second before it's needed with a time stamp of when that sound should be released. Have the speakers timesync to the milisecond-level with the receiver.

Re:IP will give these no advantage at all.

[UserGoogol]

Well, you could store the energy in some kind of battery. (Under the asumption that people don't use their speakers at full potential all day long.)

Still not neccesarily a good idea, of course.

Re:IP will give these no advantage at all.

[pboulang]

Oy vay. That's the kind of out of the box thinking that will get you fired, johnson :) "You have got to hear these great new speakers I got.. ok, they'll be ready in 10 minutes.. which one song would you like to hear?"

Re:IP will give these no advantage at all.

[Technician]

fiber optic digital audio paths. end of story

So, just what difference does fiber have over digital on coax or UTP or shielded twisted pair? Digital is digital with all else being equal, fiber doesn't gain much for short runs except some common mode noise reduction. An opto isolator can do the same without the handeling, cost and interface problems of fiber.

It is much cheaper to run the fiber signal over copper on short runs.

Live Streaming

[AtomicSnarl]

So, what does this mean when I try to listen to the live stream from the next Zimbabwean Music Festival?

Are the TCP/IP speakers on my 5-channel stereo surround system all going to have different pings? Bleah!

Re:Live Streaming

[ichigo 2.0]

The speakers aren't directly connected to the internet, they would get the audio data from your computer which would make sure everything is in sync.

This just in

[Anonymous Coward]

Monster(TM) will be releasing a new better type of cat5 cable(tm). It will cost you 100/ft dollars and a baby (should be related to you, they'll run dna scans).

Monster(TM) bids you a happy thanksgiving.

Re:This just in

[kahanamoku]

They already have

Latency?

[jcr]

Umm.... shouldn't audio be down at the Ethernet level?

-jcr

Re:Latency?

[theonetruekeebler]

Ethernet-level would have better latency than an IP stack, sure, but ties to back a platform-dependent transmission medium---you may as well use a speaker wire. And you have to write your own underlying network layer. If each speaker is running the same stack, it's going to have pretty much the same latency anyway---the worst problems arise combining digital and analog speakers.

The advantage of TCP/UDP/Music-Transport-Protocol is that the medium suddenly becomes less relevant. Take wireless, for example. Imagine being able to cart your Big Speakers outside for a patio party without running a single audio wire. Or just to install speakers on the other side of your house (or in your shed) without having to grovel through the attic or crawlspace.

Imagine how useful this could be for concerts: the sound board now has one wire running to it---the power line. Likewise with your front, middle and back stacks, and your monitors.

Another plus is that we have a nice bidirectional protocol, as well as a chance for side-channel data: speakers can report their health back to the control panel, or to other speakers in the same stack. And since each speaker is doing its own DSP anyway, getting the equalization right for a given speaker is a matter of sending it a message.

You know what? Forget the speaker---sell compact, portable, one-speaker wireless-enabled amplifiers and let people convert their existing speakers into packet-switched audio devices.

Re:Latency?

[user32.ExitWindowsEx]

Here's a question: with GbE controllers becoming more common, why do Firewire 400 / 800, USB 1.0/1.1/2.0, SPDIF, Serial, and Parallel even exist?

TCP/IP over GbE on Cat5e would be faster in all cases, I would think.

Re:Latency?

[Viceice]

You know what? Forget the speaker---sell compact, portable, one-speaker wireless-enabled amplifiers and let people convert their existing speakers into packet-switched audio devices.

Then rejoyce, for Creative has been making it for quite a while now.

http://www.creative.com/products/product.asp?categ ory=243&subcategory=247&product=9192

They even make a compact Bluetooth type

http://www.creative.com/products/product.asp?categ ory=243&subcategory=248&product=14188

Re:Latency?

[grumling]

Imagine how useful this could be for concerts: the sound board now has one wire running to it---the power line. Likewise with your front, middle and back stacks, and your monitors.

Not quite 1 wire (2, power and CAT-5e) but here you go:

http://www.aviom.com/dspSolutionsDigitalSnakesOver view.cfm?cat=DigitalSnakes&sec=Solutions

http://audiorail.home.comcast.net/

And finally CobraNet:

http://www.peakaudio.com/CobraNet/FAQ.html

However, these are not really the same thing, since they don't run over TCP/IP. TCP/IP (more likely UDP) running to speakers and remote amps could be interesting due to the routing possibilities, but there doesn't seem to be much information (other than theres a patent pending), we'll never know if this is for real or not. A google search for streamnet seems to hit a bunch of press releases and not much else. the Netstreams site is a little light in details, which leads me to think there's not much it, other than it is yet another home automation system that's trying to become a univeral network. When the thing sends 96KHz/24bit AES audio over tcp/ip and requires GigEthernet, I'll get interested. MP3 audio? Nope. I'll wait.

Re:Latency?

[The Salamander]

> Then rejoyce, for Creative has been making it for quite a while now.

That's not what the above poster or I am looking for.

That one is a single unit for two channels, non-amplified, and only plays MP3/WMA.

I want:
    transmitting unit w/ digital 48/96khz spdif input. (Stereo is fine for me, although I can see 5.1)

    multiple receiving units w/ a GOOD DAC and a GOOD QUALITY (50-100W) amplifier. One unit for each speaker.

I just want a way to place remote speakers in other rooms/floors wirelessly connected to my stereo and not have it sound like shit.

WiFi

[HappyClown]

Shame they didn't go one step further and make them wireless. It would be quite nice to move speakers between rooms on occasion without having to fight with the speaker cable (or coax in this case).

Re:WiFi

[SilverspurG]

Hm. If they're tcp/ip ready you could plug them into a wireless router. Since the wireless router is wireless it can be almost anywhere.

Re:WiFi

[HappyClown]

Sure, but it would be nice to have everything contained in the one box. Sounds like time for a speaker mod, anyone? :)

Re:WiFi

[SilverspurG]

I was actually asking for WiFi speakers around my local electronics stores about 6 months ago. I described to them a very simple system. Two boxes, each with standard audio jacks (1/8", 1/4", or RCA) with wireless broadcast between them. Radio Shack had a setup for $80 which included video. I didn't go for it.

I'm sure that if someone did do it the RIAA would be all over them for potential piracy uses.

Re:WiFi

[JediTrainer]

Shame they didn't go one step further and make them wireless.

I heard of this great new technology, something about Frequency Modulation or whatever. Apparently some genius figured out how to transmit sound *wirelessly* (no shit!) for miles, even without line of sight!

I'm sure we'll read about that in Slashdot sooner or later. If you don't catch the first article, you'll be sure to see the dupe.

Re:WiFi

[carlislematthew]

It will never work outside of the lab.

Besides, what's wrong with Amplitude Modulation? Stereo sound is over-rated and will never catch on - people can only concentrate on one thing at a time.

Re:WiFi

[eht]

AM works fine for stereo too http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadrature_amplitude_ modulation

Re:WiFi

[carlislematthew]

Let's do it! Somebody start the patent application, and I'll start to work on some kind of multicast-IP-over-AM-MP3 thing so that we can make it sufficiently complicated.

Re:WiFi

[mh101]

Two words:

Airport Express.

I know... it probably doesn't use TCP/IP, but it _is_ wireless...

Re:WiFi

[mh101]

Now we just need someone to write an "Audio Hijack Pro Airport Edition" so it can be used outside of iTunes...

Re:WiFi

[RobertLTux]

if its the set i think it was you may have been lucky you did miss out

Re:WiFi

[Arctic Fox]

You mean like airfoil?

Re:WiFi

[alyawn]

Is there such a thing as surround-sound speakers that have built-in FM receivers? This would prevent me from destroying dry-wall to run wires.

Re:WiFi

[JediTrainer]

To be completely honest, I don't know and I haven't checked.

What my wife and I do in our house (and sort of what made me think of the joke) is that if we want to play our MP3s, I have a small RatShack FM transmitter plugged into the back of her computer. Radios throughout the house are tuned to the frequency we set it at, and now we can hear the music wherever we happen to be. Useful if we're doing chores or whatnot and moving around. It works well enough - not quite clear enough for an audiophile but we're not picky.

For surround, though, I admit that I put the wires in the wall while our house was being constructed. Just like the cat5e/cat6 drops (2 wires in each location) I put on two walls in each room. I was glad that the builder let me do that.

Re:WiFi

[fishtop records]

Like a SlimDevices Squeezebox? doesn't have speakers but it does the important stuff (TCP/IP or UDP, decompression, DAC, etc.) wireless or wired.

Re:WiFi

[shking]

That's exactly what I did. I bought a low-cost/hi-quality FM transmitter from these guys and plugged it into my computer. I can listen to my music on any fm radio in the house, in the yard or, for that matter, in some of the neighbors' houses. YMMV, but it sure works well for me

End point Digital

[nurb432]

The dream of the RIAA/MPAA.. So they can restrict what you can hear.

Re:End point Digital

[Srdjant]

Precisely what I was thinking.

But anyone could break it open and tap off the analogue from the speaker wires. Unless they weld the
whole speaker box up.

Re:End point Digital

[Anonymous Coward]

yes, the last stage being mandatory brain implants so that your brain will decode their audio. ;-)

Re:End point Digital

[wkitchen]

But anyone could break it open and tap off the analogue from the speaker wires. Unless they weld the whole speaker box up.

Or more likely some kind of anti-tampering arangement that makes it stop working when you try to open it. Then you toss it in a dumpster and buy a new one so you don't get charge you with violating the DMCA when you bring it in for repair.

Re:End point Digital

[Drantin]

...How about in the time after everyone has to use RIAA/MPAA approved hearing aids/visual implants?

I dont really understand

[sebol]

After reading at polk audio website, I stil dont understand how it work.

It seem require input from ethernet or rca.

how about input?
if i have CD Player, how do i convert the output of CD player to IP packets?

Re:I dont really understand

[Comen]

You connect the cd player to your pc them send it to the speakers.
Alot of people now adays would like this, some wouldnt at all.

Nothing special

[commanderfoxtrot]

I built a networked DAC a few years ago at university. Not too hard- the complex bit is making the timing and sync accurate, with the limitations of tiny chip controllers and rather unaccurate ethernet chip documentation!

Due to TCP/IP delays e.g. switching, you need some sort of buffering, which ends up meaning expensive memory on small chips. Once you have buffering e.g. 0.2 seconds, you should be fine. I ended up using a couple of little Burr-Brown PCM54 DACs, but the system was designed to feed digital into a decent professional DAC.

Disneyland Japan has had audio over ethernet for years as well; the setup there is huge, with hundreds of speakers over a large area.

Re:Nothing special

[cgenman]

California Adventure (the LA-based Disneyland-next-to-Disneyland) also streams their entire park's audio over gigabit ethernet.

And if you go there the audio sounds terrible. Everything sounds like it is being played through a sheet of plywood. It sounds a lot like, well, most amusement park audio systems. All-weather outdoor speakers are not notoriously clean. Some of the indoor stuff isn't bad, though it isn't great... For some reason everything sounds a bit downsampled. I wonder if they're using digital source, converting to analog for processing, then converting back to digital for transmission.

Either way I hope this tech takes off, and music that starts digital stays digital right up to the speakers. But I'm not rushing out to buy a pair just yet.

Re:Nothing special

[dougmc]

And if you go there the audio sounds terrible

Well, you hinted at this, but I'll be more explicit -- I suspect the reason that it sounds terrible has nothing to do with TCP/IP or ethernet, and everything to do with poor sound quality speakers and location, and there's probably some problems with the digitation of the sounds as well. Perhaps it's all based on some old cassette tapes somebody had lying around? (And really, `It's a Small World' sounds terrible no matter how perfect the sound system is :)

Done properly, music over TCP/IP could sound as good as music over anything else that's digital. The biggest problems that I'd see would be making sure that there was enough buffering so that some very minor packet loss wouldn't cause problems, and some serious time sychronization stuff going on to make sure that the left and the right speakers (and especially speakers playing the same stream) don't get out of sync with each other. The buffering would be simple enough, but getting the sychronization right could be tricky.

Re:Nothing special

[HaveNoMouth]

I ended up using a couple of little Burr-Brown PCM54 DACs...

You had DAC chips? We had to build our DACs from scratch out of op-amps and resistor ladders. And we LIKED it!

Damn kids today.

Re:Nothing special

[delus10n0]

Don't know if you frequently go there; but CA's audio sounds great to my ears. Of course it's not going to sound "full" with tons of bass, but the clarity of the music itself is pretty darn clear. I love standing in the main entrance and listening to the instrumental Beach Boys/etc. music..

Re:Nothing special

[Technician]

Disneyland Japan has had audio over ethernet for years as well; the setup there is huge, with hundreds of speakers over a large area.

Phase accuracy in a large outdoor setting is not as critical as in a studio environment. Outdoors long distances can introduce long delays. Don't expect to seperate the keyboard, vocals, and lead guitar outdoors like you can in a studio or with headphones. In an outdoor theme park, small time delays are no longer critical to the sound.

Re:Nothing special

[commanderfoxtrot]

The actual project was to do the ethernet audio stuff- I didn't want to play with DACs at all as they get VERY complicated VERY quickly. The PCM54s were rather nice chips, with a straightforward example use on the datasheet- having to faff around with opamps and resistors would have been fun for about two minutes but I wanted to get on with the challenging stuff :-)

Ah the days of 741 and 555s... when everything was simple...

what about h4x0rz?

[catdevnull]

....when you're 0wn3d: all your bass are belong to us!

Re:what about h4x0rz?

[Anonymous Coward]

Some mods can be so stupid. They don't even know what the ratings mean. How is a joke about the current topic, offtopic?

Re:what about h4x0rz?

[catdevnull]

How in the world is that off-topic? They must be giving mod points to the engineering types again. They have no sense of humor.

Poor college student's version:

[noidentity]

Connect the speakers directly to ethernet. On the upside, you can hear problems with the network. On the downside, all you hear is buzzing.

Re:Poor college student's version:

[The Lerneaen Hydra]

On the downside, you'll fry whatever is connected on the other end of the cable, as network is not meant for 4/8ohm end terminations (more like many kilo/mega ohms.)

Re:Poor college student's version:

[Anonymous Coward]

I for one welcome our ethernet speaker overloads

Tried to set one up the other day...

[Qzukk]

but the only IP address it would let me use was the broadcast address!

Thank you, thank you, and be sure to try the veal.

We already have digital, don't we?

[maxrate]

I read the site, maybe I missed an important page however, the S/PDIF coax and optical ports today overcome the very problem this system is trying to solve. Adding TCP/IP to the mix sounds like a layer of complication that doesn't need to exist.

I'm not sure this product will fly. I'm sure there will be some excellent fits for this product with probably a large number of existing customers, however, if computer cabling is run to speakers there still is only a 300 foot maximum distance. Yes, CAT 5 is inexpensive, however those speakers aren't ! I suspect fairly good, heavier gauge speaker wire at 300 foot lengths would probably still be cheaper than the speaker + cat5 combination. Plus you've got more technology to worry about failing, just to get the darn speaker working.

I wish the best of luck to polk audio, I like a lot of their products. Innovative thinking I might add. - I'm probably missing something very important when reading the site. I just woke up too, so my mind isn't very awake yet.

Re:We already have digital, don't we?

[MattElmore]

I know the specs say cat5e is ineffective beyond 350ft, but trust me when I say it is very reliable at distances up to 700ft. I have run many cables 500-600ft with the plan to put a repeater in the middle, only to find it wasn't necessary.

Re:We already have digital, don't we?

[maxrate]

I have had various results, may times I've had to use fiber to get my signal in and out. It depends on a number of factors. It depends on what is driving the cable, the quality of the cable and what EMI / RF it is being exposed to. Thanks for the info.

Caveats-accessories.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Do you mean true audiophiles, or the clowns who buy power cables for a grand?"

*rolls eyes*

You might want to look again? Those power cables had more than just plastic coated copper. They also had integrated filters as well. A fact that for the sake of a cheap joke, gets left off.

Re:Caveats-accessories.

[ettlz]

They also had integrated filters as well. A fact that for the sake of a cheap joke, gets left off.

I better tell the experimentalists in the lab below using plain old kettle leads for their instruments that they're doing it all wrong, because some dude on Slashdot reckons there are people out there who can hear mains noise in the playback of their Jethro Tull LPs.

You bought those cables, didn't you?

Re:Caveats-accessories.

[Anonymous Coward]

And isn't just a piece of wood...

Re:Caveats-accessories.

[jcr]

They also had integrated filters as well.

What do you think a couple of RF chokes are worth?

I'll give you a hint: think much less than a thousand dollars.

-jcr

Gold Plated Cat5

[Doc Ruby]

The damn power supplies alone cost $800. How much does a pair of speakers cost?

Re:Gold Plated Cat5

[Anonymous Coward]

their $1449.00 each, so $2859 a pair + $800 for the power supply = $3659

Re:Gold Plated Cat5

[wcrowe]

$1449.99 each. EACH. At that price you should be able to drive them down to the store.

MaGIC

[Rescate]

MaGIC is a protocol introduced by Gibson (the guitar guys) to move audio/video over Cat 5 back in 1999. I don't know much about it, but I think it was designed precisely to address some of the concerns you mention, such as latency. It's also supposed to allow plug-and-play and some other features, to make interconnections easy. Supposedly. IANAM (I Am Not A Musician)

Gibson MaGIC
http://www.gibsonmagic.com/

Re:"amazing and wonderful" Slashvertisement

[1u3hr]

As subject.

If you want to mod this down, as the parent, feel free. I'll just post it again. But while I'm at it, spot the typo: "From the anouncement". So a slashvertisement, and an obvious spelling mistake. Just wait for the dupe and we'll have the archetypical Slashdot article.

Will it trickle down to the low end?

[ahg]

I have three computers in my office, three different OS's etc. If I could have one pair of speakers that I can plug into my switch and have all systems share would be really nice. (Assuming they opened the spec so someone would write linux drives for them)

Right now, the only solution I've seen, has been to buy a mixer, but that would be more cables to string around. so I use three sets of $20 speakers...

Re:Will it trickle down to the low end?

[cornface]

Why don't you just buy a KVMA switch?

Re:Will it trickle down to the low end?

[ahg]

Thank you all who have replied for your suggestions. I guess the one I like the KVMA. - I already have two of the computers on regular KVM, but the other on the other side of the room, has it's own monitor,ketyboard etc. (I've had the KVM before the ones with audio were readily available)

As for DivideByZero's suggestion, essentially a passive mixer, it's got the same drawback of running more wires around the room... not such a big deal, but I guess when I got most of my "$20" speakers, they were actually free of $5 after rebate... so I went with that.

As for the stereo amplifier- well they have multiple inputs but only one is selected for output at a time. Not exactly what I want.

If only arts or esd worked with Linux, Windows, and Macs... heck if only everything on linux worked with one standard audio server, I'd be happy.

Thanks again for your input.
-Aaron

Re:Will it trickle down to the low end?

[thakadu]

I have a bunch of old cheap laptops in different rooms around the house connected to a wirless network all running some form of unix (actually OpenBSD and Slackware Linux). From my central PC Windows XP based I have the Oddcast plugin to Foobar2000 running. On one of the laptops I have Icecast running. I then stream Rhapsody or any music source around the house to any room all controllable through ssh sessions from any room as well. The biggest challenge is getting the sound synced between two rooms. You can get reasonably close by clever use of the unix tee program and the unix nc (netcat) and a whole bunch of |s.

"(Don't Fear) the Reaper" TCP/IP Encoding

[Average_Joe_Sixpack]

Cow bell will be replaced with a system bell

Re:"(Don't Fear) the Reaper" TCP/IP Encoding

[Profane Motherfucker]

I've got a fever, and the only cure is more THROUGHPUT.

Should have a scary mod tag.

[jeffbruce]

For comments like this there should be a scary modifier.

Re:Should have a scary mod tag.

[Armadni General]

No, it should have a Karma Whore tag. He's ragging on Microsoft just to get a gig.

Re:Should have a scary mod tag.

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, where did the original poster mention Microsoft? I think you're projecting something here...

Been there, done that...

[Anonymous Coward]

"I'd recommend a separate network for sound"

Speaker wires?

Next innovation

[Julian Morrison]

Wireless audio.

No, wait, that's not new.

Re:Next innovation

[The-Bus]

Well, no, it's interesting. Imagine if you could buy a set-top box that could wirelessly stream audio to you. Perhaps you can limit it to certain channels, for example, one specializing in the "best mix of the 80s, 90s, and today" and another for "where classic rock still lives!". Sure, but where's the revenue, you say? You have a mix of certain "stations" which have ads, and others you subscribe to to hear.

It would probably never work though.

Turnkey Stream Client?

[Doc Ruby]

The catalog listings are a bit vague on what's running in the "speakers". Can I configure these to connect across the Internet to my Shoutcast server, then ship them to anywhere in the world with broadband, expecting them to just pipe in my audio? That makes overseas deployment and maintenance seem a lot more feasible for small companies who just need remote audio installers, rather than remote IT pros.

Meridian

[CarbonRing]

Sending music over data lines to self-powered speakers isn't new. Meridian has been doing it for at least 10 years. They don't use TCP/IP, but it's the same idea.

mods on crack again

[Anonymous Coward]

Parent made a joke. It's funny. Laugh (I did)

End point Digital-Back in the day.

[Anonymous Coward]

"But anyone could break it open and tap off the analogue from the speaker wires. Unless they weld the whole speaker box up."

Uh, huh. Do you people actually read what you write? What's the point of having a digital *anything* if you're just going to go back to analog copying? And before you bring up the "It's going to end up that way" argument. Remember DRM is about "copying and distribution*", not "playback".

*Yeah! Distribution. No one cares if you have a million burned copies of the latest single. That's your money and time going to waste. Distribute those copies and it's a whole different story.

Re:End point Digital-Back in the day.

[Anonymous Coward]

My open reel tape deck sounds great and I actually dub over any CD's that sound like shit due to poor mastering (that's most modern stuff BTW). The point in having digital audio is that it's just a cheap, convenient storage and distribution format, saves paying for 1000ft* of 1/2" tape to be sent UPS to listen to an album I may not like.

* I record at 15ips, but if music was distributed on 1/2" tape it'd be @ 30ips

TCP/IP speakers...

[cciRRus]

... "sounds" like VoIP if you ask me. ;-)

mod parent up

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish I had modpoints myself.

You will need this first...

[Sponge Bath]

iptables -A OUTPUT -i eth0 --artist brittney.spears -j DENY

Re:You will need this first...

[Anonymous Coward]

that should be
iptables -A OUTPUT -o eth0 -m artist --artist brittney.spears -j REJECT ;)

Re:You will need this first...

[whterbt]

Considering what she does for music, shouldn't that go in the mangle table?

Re:You will need this first...

[caluml]

iptables v1.2.11: Can't use -i with OUTPUT

Latency

[tbcpp]

What about the latency? Anything higher than 5-10ms is noticable to the human ear. So, this is great for music or PA systems, but will not work for stage productions where going from analog into a sound card, to a A/D through the ethernet connector through the cable, D/A converter and out through the amp will take more like 20ms. Worthless for stage and live events.

Re:Latency

[Anonymous Coward]

Latency is not an issue in these systems - one competitor, NetworkSound (www.networksound.com), has latencies around 80 microseconds, well below the 5 ms human factor. They're not compressing the audio (NS runs up to 64 channels bi-directional of 48khz 16-bit (DAT equivalency) at the 80 microsecond latency rate). And their Ethernet digital audio snakes are being used in stage and live events. It's hard to comprehend, but hearing it in tandem with traditional systems sealed the deal for me.

morons

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought this was a thread for nerds. Everyone complaining about packet latency is obviously not an engineer. Of course they are buffering the data.. what a bunch of morons..

Re:morons

[Comen]

Agreed, and I can think of some good uses for this, for one thing these could be made wireless and probally still sound really good.
I bought some of the wireless radio frequency speakers once and took them back they sounded like such crap.
I would love to have a pair of speakers like these around the house that were wireless and they make wireless WIFI adapters for a plain ethernet connections.
They are pricey, but my home speakers in my living room were $10,000.
People complaining about having to buy power amps for them, you will have to buy power amps for any set of speaker, maybe they are just confussed about this cause they have really bad stereos that have intenal amps in the all in one receiver.
Also got to remeber things like this will get cheaper over time, they first set of anything is going to be expensive, has to be this way to make it worth puttig the R&D time.

Re:morons

[drkstrm]

I'd be interested to see if these were address-able and maybe interface with a desktop app..

Multicast gives you perfect sync ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Question:

I've read the stereo sync discussions here.
I don't know how Netstreams works but this would be the way I would implement it.

Assume we have 2 speakers and one audio source that streams the audio to the speakers.
I think the best way for perfect sync would be to send the stereo stream
as interleaved PCM data.
Basically packets containing both left and right audio samples in an interleaved fashion: sample1_left/sample1_right/sample2_left/sample2_ri ght ....

This would stream twice the amount of data to the single mono speaker but since the speaker is getting one single stream anyway (assume it's 24bit x 96kHz which gives you about 281KB/sec), the overhead does not matter.

That way even if you used bigger buffers both speakers would get the packet at the same time thanks to multicast. but the left speaker would extract the left audio samples and the right speaker the other samples.

I think if the sound source (the transmitter that sends ethernet packets) has low jitter you can achieve delays below 3-5msec which makes the system suitable for realtime use (watching TV, games etc).
Many synths and digital musical instruments have latencies that range in the 5-10msecs and are perfectly playable.

Do you see problems in the DAC clock frequency drift amongst sender and receiver ?
For example assume the sender sends at 44120 samples/sec and the receiver's DAC is clocked at 44080 due to clock imprecisions in manufacturing, temperature changes etc.

What would be the best algorithm to correct this frequency drift without introducing too much latency ?

measuring the incoming packet frequency (assume the transmitter sends 64 samples per packet) and outgoind DAC frequency and then if the buffer is getting too full or about getting empty then resample the samples with a small factor near to 1 (eg 1.0001 or .9999) so that the buffer is optimally filled. I think since the sender/receiver sample rate difference is more or less constant I think the algorithm should work well and give good sound quality.

What do you think ?

Better ideas ?

cheers,
Mark

Re:Multicast gives you perfect sync ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Good thoughts. Finally a comment that actually had some thought to it. I would send relative timing information with each packet. Then playback would be synced to the source. The real problem then is getting all the playback clocks synced. This could be done at a lower level than tcp/ip or maybe an in-expensive short range rf link to "reset" the clocks between songs or some other non-use interval? Lets keep this going... this is more fun than reading people complaining about latency... :)

Gold Plated Power Supplies.

[Anonymous Coward]

"The damn power supplies alone cost $800."

Wait! Wait! Can I do an audiophille joke about them buying $800 power supplies, instead of the $20 Wal-Mart, wall-wart?

Bullhonkey

[An Onerous Coward]

To put it another another way: it's one fiftieth of a second. You show me someone who claims to be able to hear a 1/50th of a second synchronization gap, and I'll show you someone who is making stuff up to impress people with his 1337 4ud10phy13 5k177z.

The rule of thumb in game programming is, "to the user, 1/10th of a second is the same as instantaneous," and I've never heard a distinction made between sound events and user interface events.

Besides, on my local network, the time necessary to ping my gateway router is 2 milliseconds, not 20. That includes two hops in each direction, processing on two separate routers, etc. So unless the grandparent has way more talent in his left ear than I do in my entire body, I'm more than a lot skeptical when he claims he can actually hear it.

Re:Bullhonkey

[Anonymous Coward]

"You show me someone who claims to be able to hear a 1/50th of a second synchronization gap, and I'll show you someone who is making stuff up to impress people with his 1337 4ud10phy13 5k177z."

Then you are an idiot.

As a musician, I can tell the difference in an audio interfact that is 40ms latent vs 20ms. Its *VERY* easy to tell...and I'm not even that great of player.

I know others that play and 20ms is way too high...I have to routinely tweak a friends machine to get it down to around 13ms so as to sound at a time that is relative to the time he hit the keys (around this time, you get about the same reaction as you would playing piano -- from the time you touch the key til the time the hammers hit the strings).

20ms CAN be discomforting to anyone playing music. Playing video games? I'm not so sure its worth anything because I've never played a game with a decent aural stage that its usable...then again I don't play much in the way of games these days.

All in all, this example isn't even anything that would be consider an audiophile application (musicians use notoriously crappy monitors and otherwise because if you can get your stuff to sound good on that media, it will sound GREAT on the good stuff).

clif

Re:Bullhonkey

[statusbar]

Of course if there is only one speaker, it will be impossible for anyone to tell the difference that 20ms causes.

The problem comes when you have two speakers playing back stereo content, and one speaker is 20ms out. You may not hear it as a delay, but you will perceive it as a stereo imaging problem.

jeff

Re:Bullhonkey

[danila]

I don't know about audio sync in games and audio sync in audio (what are we syncing it with?), but I often notice 100 ms A/V delays when watching movies on my computer. A 200 ms delay is often obvious, a 100 ms delay is sometimes noticeable, a 50 ms delay (1 frame) is almost imperceptible.

This depends on source material a lot, but in some cases bad sync can reduce the quality of the final experience 25-50% (subjectively).

Re:Bullhonkey

[dada21]

I can easily detect a 20ms delay.

http://www.calrec.com/product/lipstick.htm

With the onset of high quality television transmission systems, even the small difference of 20-40ms of video/audio delay can cause programme impairment for the viewing audience.

So can most people. Some are more sensitive than others. I can also detect video refresh rate differences and frame rate differences quite easily.

2ms latency over a network IS minimal, but add digital encoding, ADC/DAC delays, and other delays inherent in this type of delivery and you'll see they can add up quick.

Heck, same link above:

However, multi-link MPEG transmission can also result in noticeable delay and loss of lip-sync.

1 frame (33ms) is HUGE especially when watching people talk. I've been to movies where I had to change seats from the delay, and I'm not OCD.

Re:Bullhonkey

[dada21]

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5668601.html 60% down: If the is sync error is above the limit of the human audio sensitivity, a listener/viewer will notice the discrepancy. Generally, the sensible limit of the lip sync error is said to be about several milliseconds.

Re:Bullhonkey

[dada21]

Check my other replies, numerous studies show some can detect 7-15ms delays in lipsync.

Re:Bullhonkey

[clifyt]

No, I work with professionals that can tell the difference.

A fool would make blanket statements with no proof, nor experience to back it up.

Re:Bullhonkey

[Anonymous Coward]

20ms delay should be easy for anyone to detect. Both of my stereo systems allow you to adjust the delay of the rear speakers to 5ms, 10ms, or 15ms, to create the echo effect of a larger room. Even 15ms can sound wrong at times, so I like to keep the delay low.

Now imagine a set of 5 speakers where the delay may be different in each. If the delay is the same, its no problem. But if there's any strange variation, it will make the music sound like crap, with a broken delay or pan effect on it.

Pet hate of mine

[Anonymous Coward]

You just know that anyone who uses the term "interconnect" is a fucking shmuck. I've been involved in wiring several modest studios, each cable in a standard loom is around 2mm thick and standard mic or instrument cable is 6mm thick. We cut all looms 4ft and top out at 16ft for unbalanced cable, a hi-fi "interconnect" is only 2.5ft long. If in a professionally designed listening enviroment like a studio control room, signal-loss due to cable is not an issue how is it supposed to manifest itself in the 2.5ft from consumer CD player to amp? Nobody in their right mind is going to pay for 2.5 ton of copper to connect every piece of outboard in a studio, even if by some mysterious alchemy hitherto unknown to physics doing so could improve the sound.

This is nothing compared to how some CD players sound "warmer" and "more detailed" than others, even when everything from the $2 mechanism to the output stage dropped of the same production line in Malaysia. Ohhh, hear the warmth!

Question about timing

[Polo]

One question in my mind is how they get the delay to work...

I can imagine mixing normal speakers and tcp/ip speakers and
ending up with out-of-phase or echo problems if there are unequal
delays. I could also imagine tv pictures out-of-sync with speakers.

Anyone have any idea/experience with this?

This sounds like a familiar concept...

[XdevXnull]

*cough* Asterisk *cough*

Wired Home

[cgenman]

I've tried to wire up a house to have multiple rooms served by a single audio source. It is really a pain. Basically all high-end amps assume that you have some variant on a 4:1, 5:1, 7:1, etc setup. None of them expect that you want a 4:1 for the dining room + a mono for your bedroom and a Stereo for your kitchen. Split the wires? Introduces audible distortion. Multiple Amps? Again, distortion.

The wires also went literally everywhere, and were snaking around the apartment like an overgrown fern monster. And this was only 2 additional rooms... My original plan was to try 3 rooms, and build up to all 6 areas (with two sources!). None of that would be practical with current tech.

For a single room, you are completely correct that the traditional analog setup is best for the forseeable future. But people don't live in a single room.

While audiophiles may sit down on the couch and listen to their music, the average person likes to listen to their music while going around the house doing what they need to do... be that cleaning, laundry, making breakfast, or anything else. Personally, I'd much rather have a constant, pervasive mono audio stream than a great high-fi setup that I get 20 second snippets of as I run around. All of the timing and positioning cues become a garbled mess when you're listening from one room over anyway.

Re:Wired Home

[Martix]

I Bought a FM25B from Ramsey electronics.
Just dial 88.1mhz on any FM sterio radio.(broad cast qualaty)
Great for everyday listening to music.
No Wires no mess...

OR for better sound.
IF you love wires use a 4 or 8 ohm to 70 volt distirbuation transformer on the amp
and 70 volt to 8-4 ohm to the Speakers with Lpads.(one large amp can handel lots of speakers)

Do have a nice kick ass set up downstairs if i just want to veg and enjoy the music.

just my two cents on that.

Analog hole

[bobbuck]

"...you could tap the wires on the speaker and convert that back to line level."

Unless the amplifier circuitry can detect a change of impedence and hose the output. I'm scared.

Re:Analog hole

[Anonymous Coward]

Couldn't you just disconnect the speaker and present a fake load?

Wireless and Low Latency = impossible ?

[Anonymous Coward]

About sending audio over WI-FI. Contrary to wired Ethernet where the packet loss ratio is pratically zero as long as you stay within the bandwidth limits, Wi-fi experiences frequent packet losses.

Does anyone think that you can send low latency UDP or Multicast audio streams without some error correction algorithm ?

TCP works because it's lossless but introduces high latencies. So it's not suitable for real time audio.
What would you propose ? Sending the UDP packet 2-3 times in a row hoping that at least one copy goes through ?
I tried to send 2 UDP packets in a row and when there is a packet loss then it comes in bursts and both packets are lost.

Ideas ?

Mark

Re:Wireless and Low Latency = impossible ?

[Anonymous Coward]

you would just have to buffer ahead quite a bit more than with wires. I was referring to an RF link just for establishing a time sync between source and destination...

In other words . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm. Those bloody students downstairs playing their loud music at all hours... on YOUR stereo.

All your bass are belong to us

Sorry, I couldn't help myself.

cat /boot/vmlinuz /dev/audio

[dindi]

So `cat /boot/vmlinuz >/dev/audio` is obsoleted ?

I sometimes do that on my wife's laptop if she does not pay attention, or I am in the creepy mood ...

ahm yes :) she refused winXP when I offered to put the original hdd with the stock XP on it back into the laptop :)

more on the topic: somehow i do not see myself turning to networked speakers .... maybe my audio cables are just fine for my office/video room (6x7 meters) and my low-end sony DTS amp

ps: some people say catting the kernel into the audio is actually the sound of GOD, some say it is Linus himself ...

Amplification

[lahi]

Sorry if I'm just showing my age (my knowledge of audio systems is a couple decades behind the times.)

Can someone please enlighten me on what "digital amplification" is?
Bigger ones and zeros????

-Lasse

Re:Amplification

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably Class D amplification (no I'm not joking). IIRC, it's like a switch mode power supply in that you digitally build up your waveform with many high frequency pulses and then smooth them together with a capacitor or filter network.

Better Uses

[Anonymous Coward]

This concept will evolve with time and cost reductions into a far better use in my opinion; Business paging systems.

We install paging systems for large companies and wiring/building a separate paging audio infrastructure in a large campus facility adds a whole new set of complexities; Intrafacility wiring, bridging amplifiers, zone controllers, volume controls and security covers to keep people out of them, intrafacility leased lines, PABX interfaces, multiple music sources and licenses, etc., interfaces to one or more security centers for emergency evacuation instructions, and so on and so on.

Small, inexpensive, (usually) low power speakers that were network connected using POE (power over ethernet) would just be a modest extension of the existing IP network physical plant. IP based speakers would be totally flexible as to audio sources, zone assignments, functions, volume levels (on a page by page basis if necessary). priority over-rides, etc. You could page by department, even if in different buildings, page by room, page by floor, page by building, page by leaseholder, page by.., well you get the idea. It would all be software driven and could evolve with time. Large amounts of power are usually not needed and would be easy to wire from AC mains in the few cases needed, and ultra-low distortion levels or noise are not important.

We had to run the paging wiring in conduit in one job I did (fire marshal's "unique" interpretation of the code), but not the network cabling. The cost for the conduit alone was staggering and would probably have paid for this technology at today's price point.

Re:Better Uses

[Anonymous Coward]

Berbee IP Speaker with a program called InformaCast will do everything you discussed above plus more. I really see it limited to business/education paging. http://www.berbee.com/ under Berbee Software both items are covered.

I think I heard you can now order this software from Cisco directly, I don't know if it works with other IPT or TDM systems.

What an Insanely Bad Idea

[Ralph Spoilsport]

This means that the music will be encrypted/DRM'd at the microphone and then routed to your speaker, but only if you've paid the RIAA thier extortion. Circumventing it will fall under DMCA as a felony. And don't give me the hacker crap of "The speakers will be analogue, so we can tap the signal there" - sure - You Can Do That, and fuck up a really expensive set of speakers AND set yourself up for a felony under DMCA. If Polk/Bose/B&W/Dynaudio/Infinity/Sony/Panasonic/etc . all get on board with this, it WILL SUCK.

I've been predicting this all for years - I just didn't think it would come this soon...

RS

Since when did...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nvidia and ATI start making NICs? :-)

Standards

[samj]

This is all very nice, but I've been enjoying IP speakers since purchasing an Airport Express a year ago. It works very nicely for my needs, and I'm fairly picky. I don't like the delay between starting the music and hearing it (although I appreciate why it exists, especially over wireless) and I'd like more in the way of synchronisation (eg so I could stream simultaneously to multiple units, play dvds, etc.) and integration (only plays from itunes - being able to play from the OS without AirFoil and maybe from Windows/Linux).

What we do need though is standards.

obsolesence.

[tchdab1]

I have speakers I use and like that I bought over 30 years ago.
If I put these IP-centric things in my wall, will I be able to find and run the software that drives them 10 years from now?
I also still have a small pile of 5.25" floppies with no hope of ever reading them again.

Ping

[whiteranger99x]

Does this mean if I ping the speaker's IP address, it'll generate a pinging noise like on sonar? :-)

Re:Ping

[Tony Hoyle]

That would be cool..

Not $1000 cool, but cool.

Re:Ping

[cnettel]

Only if you use it to tunnel a UDP/TCP/IPoSW (UDP/TCP/IP over sound waves) connection...

On the internet...

[hachete]

...no one can hear you scream. Hang on.

noo.......

[flamingiceclone]

the new form of terror would be the terrorist making the white house listen to al'qaeda porn radio

Is there a bluetooth equivalent?

[thebiss]

Has anyone seen a Bluetooth equivalent? I'm looking for a bluetooth audio gateway that includes a built-in amp and outputs, without the transmitter mate (my home PCs already have Bluetooth transceivers.)

BLUETAKE makes an audio gateway (http://www.bluetake.com/products/BT460EX.htm) that overachieves - I don't need to transmitter part of it, and the receiver is way too big.

Why use a switch?

[DivideByZero]

Why not just get a terminal strip and some appropriate diodes, and run all three outputs to one common input? Audio signals add together fine.

It's called a stereo amplifier...

[eliasoregon]

...I bought a one for $15 at goodwill that's about the size of a playstation with 5 inputs. It powers two little Bose bookshelf speakers and sounds great. I just press a button to switch between my mac and pc's audio.

Speaker Security

[c0d3r]

Now we will have to install a firewall and setup encryption to insure that no one will inject sublimital messages into your speakers. I wonder what it will sound like when there isn't enough bandwidth to send the music stream when someone ping floods your speaker. How about a microphone, guitar and drum set with ip addresses? Hey man, my bands subnet id is 123.22.33.0

Speaker Security / Other Devices

[c0d3r]

Now we need to setup a firewall and encryption to make sure that no one injects sublimital messages into your speakers. I wonder what it would sound like when there isn't enough bandwidth to send the music stream when someone ping floods your speaker. What about microphones, guitars and drum sets with ip addresses? "Hey man, my bands subnet id is 123.45.68.0".

The perfect speakers

[egarland]

additional ADCs and DACs reduce resolution

Who said anything about additional conversions. You can pull music directly off of CD in digital format and send it that way to speakers. One DAC, in the speaker, directly attached to the amp which is tuned exactly to the speakers and directly attached with no noise or tranmission loss. This setup by its very nature is the ultimate in audio quality. Sure analog heads who think that vinal sounds better than CD won't like it but they're all insane anyway. The loss and noise between amp and speakers is why people waste so much money on monster cables. This eliminates that completely.

I've long talked about the ethernet speaker with my friends as something I thought would eventually be huge. Now what we need is an interoperable ethernet speaker protocol, and a software sound card driver that will allow me to use them as my computer speakers directly.

Funny asside.. how long do you think it will be before monster starts selling Monster Ethernet cables and people start swearing they can hear the difference.

streaming from multiple machines

[mccoyspace]

Here's how I got around that problem. My setup: old G4 in the basement with all the music stored on an external volume. This is the 'master' library. We have two Airports each connected to speakers and two laptops. I periodically copy the preferences file from the master library to the two laptops, replacing their preferences. Then when I mount the server's music volume over the network each laptop has a "native" copy to the server's library which can be played out to either of the two airports. I use this same technique to listen to my collection on my office mac at work, uplinking through my cable modem. I bit of a kludge, but it works.

This is the beginning of total DRM

[pyite69]

The inability of consumers to mix and match components will make it much easier to require DRM, particularly if it is impossible to use standard analog speakers.

Whoa, cool!

[ln -sf head ass]

Now we have smart speakers that eventually will only play content digitally signed by an RIAA member, in addition to enforcing DRM. Sign me up!

Apple Airport Express vs FM xmitter

[shking]

Rather than buying a wi-fi client for each "music box", I bought am low-cost/hi-quality FM transmitter from these guys. I can get my music on any fm radio in the house, the yard (or, for that matter, at some of the neighbors' houses). One example: I can have a custom playlist for a dinner party on the living room stereo. A second example: I listen to tunes on a boom box while I'm working in the yard. YMMV, but it sure works well for me!

One word, Kimmie, plesioisochronous

[thoglette]

Audio over TCP/IP. YABunch of losers. Haven't you heard of ISDN or ATM? Fixed bandwidth, fixed latency over IP makes as much sense as mail order video hire

Burnt Copies

[nurb432]

"No one cares if you have a million burned copies of the latest single."

Ah, but they DO care. They want you to pay for each copy you have. One for your car, one for your ipod, another for your house.. etc etc.

In their twisted world, thats revenue that you have stolen from them.

( actually their dream would be pay per listen, but that is a different discussion )

Some have mentioned it...latency...

[cr0sh]

I want to ask it myself again - the problem with any audio system that utilizes streaming or another method over a network is room syncronization. In fact, I am not even sure it is possible at all. Basically, when you have a whole-house audio system, you might want to have certain rooms playing the exact same audio, while other get separate audio feeds. Typically, the rooms involved are adjacent to one another (or may be the entire house plus the outside) - so as you move from room to room, you have a continuous audio experience.

With a network and streaming, though, keeping the speakers in sync with one another is difficult, if not impossible. You end up with "effects" of delays - which make every room sound like an echo chamber (as you hear the delay in other rooms vs the zone/room you are in). With a standard audio solution, this isn't typically an issue. Yes, you have to pump more power through the wires to make up for the attenuation of the signal (or have remote amplifiers at the speakers) - but you won't have the effects of latency.

A TCP/IP streaming solution may work fine if everyone is listening to completely different audio in different rooms with their doors shut, but a whole house system listening to the same source in different rooms is going to cause issues, unless they have somehow improved the technology to eliminate the latency/delay issues...

The perfect speakers... are currently amp-free

[spage]

One DAC, in the speaker, directly attached to the amp which is tuned exactly to the speakers and directly attached with no noise or tranmission loss.

You'd think so. Meridian has sold such speakers for years using their own digital link, and yet listening to their DSP3000/DSP3500 integrated speakers, spouse and I were mostly unimpressed. I was fully disposed to buy their vision, but wound up with separate conventional CD+DAC, amplifiers, and speakers (Linn, VTL and Magnepan, each 5+ year-old designs) because it sounded hella better. This is at the "mere" $10,000 system price level. I've heard the even more expensive Meridian DSP6000 and 8000 speakers and respect them, but for that sort of money there are some sensational speakers like Soundlab and Wilson whose makers have no interest or ability in amplification. Specialization continues to win over integration's undoubted benefits.

No, no!

[Julian Morrison]

It would be nice, but I worry the EM spectrum's too limited. It would surely be taken over by the government on the pretext of fair allocation, cartelized with a system of licenses, captured by music industry placemen, and forced to play lowest-common-denominator trash. Despite the technology now becoming possible, I don't believe we can look to wireless broadcast audio for any sort of information revolution.

personally

[ClioCJS]

Personally, I prefer my FM-transmission solution. PCI card in PC that transmits on FM. I have 4 or 5 zones playing music in my house, and you can usually hear 2 of them at once. Synchronization is a MUST! It's cheap, easy, and I can tune into my mp3s even with my walkman or hand-crank radio. "PCI MAX 2005" is the name of the product, it runs $180.