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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."
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.
Just wait until these things become common, and their owners connect them to a wifi network ...
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.
Umm.... shouldn't audio be down at the Ethernet level?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
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.
http://blog.grcm.net/
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.
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.
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...
--Aaron Greenberg
*cough* Asterisk *cough*
"I'm a Laver, not a Phyto[plankton]"
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
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.
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