Wireless Loud Speakers: How Far Is The Technology
Here’s a question for you guys that I’m hoping to get a simple answer for. I was just writing a blog post on some bluetooth speakers and I posed the question to myself
“How come we haven’t had any wireless professional-standard speakers and monitors out in the market yet?”
There should have been at least an attempt by now surely…right?
Wireless isn’t reliable?
…or necessary unless you insist on every device in your home being wireless because cables are ugly…
the problem is not be the wireless signal, thats doable today, but I dont think there is any way to transfer the needed power wireless, somewhere u will need an amp and that will make u to be stuck with a powercord somewhere
I suppose it’s not as flakey as wireless networking but you still theoretically can suffer from signal interference. It would be like television, if the data sent isn’t digital it gets distorted, if it is digital and the signal passes a certain threshold of interference there will be no sound at all - sounds brilliant for that professional quality!
I mean come on man, run some fucking cables!
Give me a good reason to have wireless speakers - the only one i can think of is in hometheater situations with rear surround speakers often being a pain to run cabling for.
I don’t even think wireless keyboards and mice are worthwhile unless you use them on a media center pc or projector and are possibly moving around the loungeroom.
Well anyone who is really into Pro Audio wouldnt have bluetooth turned on in the first place.
Having any wireless turned on while you are doing audio production or mixing can can cause dropouts of your audio stream and just generally increase latency.
Then there is the bandwidth of bluetooth, basicly its not fast enough to stream uncompressed audio, so all data would have to be compressed before its sent off - this also increases latency.
Also the latency of a bluetooth connection is pretty terrible, if you tried any of these products you would find it near impossible to do anything in realtime.
Basicly it all comes down to home wireless systems in general being in their infancy and thus being unsuitable for real time audio streaming in a performance enviroment.
[quote=“BentoSan, post:5, topic:1370, username:BentoSan”]
Having any wireless turned on while you are doing audio production or mixing can can cause dropouts of your audio stream and just generally increase latency.
Then there is the bandwidth of bluetooth, basicly its not fast enough to stream uncompressed audio, so all data would have to be compressed before its sent off - this also increases latency.
Also the latency of a bluetooth connection is pretty terrible, if you tried any of these products you would find it near impossible to do anything in realtime.
Basicly it all comes down to home wireless systems in general being in their infancy and thus being unsuitable for real time audio streaming in a performance enviroment.
[/quote]OK…but, it doesn’t have to be a Bluetooth connection though. Bluetooth is the bottom of the barrel when it comes to wireless connectivity, there’s always wi-fi…right?
The way I see it, all a transmitter needs to do is be able to send the same information [that a cable carries], without any quality loss, to the recieving speakers which can read the information (as it is) and reproduce the sound, without interfering with the other equipment’s performance.
[quote=“Tukindz, post:6, topic:1370, username:Tukindz”]
The way I see it, all a transmitter needs to do is be able to send the same information [that a cable carries], without any quality loss, to the recieving speakers which can read the information (as it is) and reproduce the sound, without interfering with the other equipment’s performance.
[/quote]Hmm, having read that back it’s kinda starting to make sense why they didn’t bother…it’s just messy.
u’ll still be stuck with power needs for the amplification, so runin cords is a better solution anyway
All wifi consumer products have a latency that is unsuitable for real time streaming of music its that simple. As soon as the technological barriers are broken you will start seeing systems that arnt just designed for playback of music where latency is of little concern.
the future will be cableless/wireless. not just audio, but everything. the new top of the range lcd’s and plasma’s only have power cables now, everything else is wireless, even high capacity data that would go through HDMI. the point is its still all early technology, and so, not cheap.
10 years time is when we might start seeing the first completely wireless low power solutions (home and office) i.e. 230v. this is mainly down to inductive charging technologies, much like how an electric toothbrush charges. although you will probably be looking at 1-2 inductive devices per room to power all the electrical products in it.
Essentially, the electrical product and the inductive base form a two-part transformer, with the base having one part of the transformer and the electrical product having the other. When you have the product within a defined distance of the base, the complete transformer is created and power can flow.