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I love the idea of high fidelity, active, wireless speakers, and a transceiver source-control hub... ️

solderdude

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The keyword in my wish for a battery pack was "optional", just in case you missed it, or perhaps you just desire to argue... ;)

Power storage technology is advancing at a good pace, and we'll see graphene based batteries, with much higher capacities, in a few years - as a matter of fact, I've read that Samsung expects to bring the technology to market very soon.

It won't be long before we have wireless power transmission as well, although that technology is still very specific currently. We actually do this now, using microwaves and lasers, for some commercial and military applications, but I don't think that's been scaled down for home usage just yet - it will come, though. I'm aware of wireless mobile device charging now, but that's still applied near-field, and I'm referring to longer range.

In a future, I can see a home with several wired mains scattered about for legacy appliances. But, everything going forward from this point will be wireless - it's inevitably, desirable, and good...:cool:

It has nothing to do with a desire to argue. Just noting some of the things I have my reservations about.
Yes, battery technology will improve so will efficiency and wireless technology (when the ether gets even more cramped).
Maybe it can run a bit longer and maybe efficiency of speakers and class-D amps will improve even more.

Wireless charging technology over a few meters in a living room ?
Having 10W traveling through the air (optical will burn your skin) or using high power RF concentrated in a narrow angle ?
Severe doubts about that... in home usage that is safe I mean.
There are already concerns about the safety of mobile phone power with G5 networking.
Data-rates will increase and the whole house and your body will be packed with wireless transceivers.

Technology will be there and the market demands it so it will happen for sure... Do they care about (possible) health issues that much ?

I also have no doubt almost every low power consumption devices will become wireless or be available wireless as well.
All power consuming devices I don't see this happening though.
More mains connections (and 5V DC ?) all around rooms... very likely.

In any case for my loudspeakers at home I don't see benefits when it comes to getting rid of cables.
I do see the benefits of active speakers (and at the same time wonder about longevity and availability of used components over a long time frame).
In this case the wireless part only replaces 2 line level screened cables but not the power connections.
That's my point and has nothing to do with the future which I find hard to predict.

In my youth there was only vinyl, tape and radio for music and only tape and radio were transportable. When folks would have said in 20 years time you could carry along a very small device with thousands of songs on it in high-end sound quality and access to almost all music wireless I would have laughed out loud..
So yes, the future will hold things in store for us that I can not possibly imagine yet.
Personally I am hoping for holographic audio where the direction of soundwaves in all directions is preserved and reproduced.
Hell... having this wireless without having to recharge things within 1 year or maybe even never would be nice to.
 
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JJB70

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I think that active speakers with built in DACs are the way forward for home audio set ups however I also tend to prefer wired power connections. I think a battery powered speaker for fixed home use is not necessary and that the disadvantages of battery power outweigh the advantages in that application. If the manufacturers do decide to push the market into battery powered speakers then I just hope that they will adopt standard user replaceable batteries as I am reluctant to buy anything with sealed proprietary batteries now unless it is something I expect to replace in 2 - 3 years anyway. And I don't generally expect to replace hifi gear in that time.
 

andymok

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It's such a reliable method that it's been used in professional live audio broadcasting products for many years now.

A simple "audio over wifi" Web search will reveal many companies and products that utilize the technology... :cool:


In Pro Audio, WiFi remains mainly a Control method rather than actual Data transmission I think.

This is because you have to deal with multicast management, and radio operates only at half-duplex, plus the need of QoS prioritizing various info and data, you get severe penalty in throughput/performance. Most real-time data are packed into UDP so there is no guarantee what so ever.

AFAIK Ravenna/AES67 relies on PTPv2 to maintain timing/clocking. It's robust and stable in a wired network, given that the environment, networking topology and wire length are pretty much fixed and stable over a period of time. Not so much the case in multicast wireless though.
 
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andreasmaaan

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It's such a reliable method that it's been used in professional live audio broadcasting products for many years now.

@andymok is correct. Often PA speakers use WiFi, but as a control method only. It can be misleading as the LAN input is still present on the rear of the box, despite being unable to receive audio signals.
 
OP
BillG

BillG

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@andymok is correct. Often PA speakers use WiFi, but as a control method only. It can be misleading as the LAN input is still present on the rear of the box, despite being unable to receive audio signals.

Must I Google everything for you guys?


https://www.audiofetch.com/


By the way, they're not the only company doing this and these are for professional installations... :facepalm:
 

Wombat

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A proper fact based thread on the suitability of WiFi for streaming audio at home would make a great thread, personally I’m unaware of any issues.

As a platform Wifi reliably transfers data for billions of people , why is Audio any diffrent if the implementation is adequate and if it’s not why not?


And it's an Aussie invention so it works.
e417.png
 
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FrantzM

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Hi

WiFi does work but is not as reliable as wired. If you want 100% reliability in term of getting your data then use wires.
It makes not much sense to go to battery pack in speakers that are meant to fixed position use...because somehow you will have to charge these batteries through a wire. Wireless charging while sexy requires a lot of power and if speed of charging time and convenience are the essence you need to radiate a lot of power .... Sending the amount of RF power capable of charging the kind of batteries that are likely to power those speakers through the air around water-based intelligent beings is a sure way to accelerate their demise.

Else I love active speakers that are DSP controlled. don't need them to be wireless
 

andreasmaaan

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Must I Google everything for you guys?


https://www.audiofetch.com/


By the way, they're not the only company doing this and these are for professional installations... :facepalm:

One company on the whole WWW doing it and their site is down... ;)

What kind of installations are these guys doing?

1538560168639.png


EDIT: don't worry, I've found a PDF online for them that is actually up and running.

They don't seem to build WiFi into speakers, they just manufacturer a WiFi streaming box that the user then connects to normal wired speakers via RCA cables.

So nothing new here... :cool:
 
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andymok

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Obviously you could throw anything that runs on wires into the air :p. Not saying that it's not possible, but since you mentioned Pro Audio and broadcasting instead of consumer solutions, just saying right now that is not the industry's approach.

What industry's have done/trying to achieve now, is putting AoIP over the Ethernet in/better than ASIO mode, support multi-channel DSD with redundancy and max routing flexibility, on optical fibres that runs miles away, with jitter at sub-mili sec region. And don't forget about the video signal, they have to be together as well.

Genelec has a speaker running with Ethernet already. Would be interesting to see experiment driving it with a wireless bridge :p
 

Wombat

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My AVR has 4K over WiFi networking. Shouldn't audio be a piece-of-cake? Maybe plankton don't like WiFi?
a4d728d20e3051aaad0a8d21d63074552.jpg
 

andreasmaaan

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In the case of PA the main issue is signal integrity AFAIK (and maybe habit/convention). It's annoying when the wifi drops out while watching a movie at home, but it's disastrous when the signal drops out at a venue. I'm far from an expert in wireless networks, but I do have experience in PA, and I believe that fear (whether or not justified) of drop-outs would rule out wifi and other wireless alternatives for most PA applications. This could change in the future though..
 

Wombat

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In the case of PA the main issue is signal integrity AFAIK (and maybe habit/convention). It's annoying when the wifi drops out while watching a movie at home, but it's disastrous when the signal drops out at a venue. I'm far from an expert in wireless networks, but I do have experience in PA, and I believe that fear (whether or not justified) of drop-outs would rule out wifi and other wireless alternatives for most PA applications. This could change in the future though..

If the WiFi drops-out at home the expectation of the gear for environment is probably the problem. Not the tech.
 

maverickronin

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The problem with wifi is its dependence on environmental conditions. It' great if you have minimal interference but since 2.4GHz is a largely unregulated band used by an ever increasing number of consumer devices there's not much you can do if conditions aren't good enough.
 

andreasmaaan

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@BillG, I don't think anyone's saying "nay" to the idea of using wireless speakers generally, just to the idea that they are being used in PA applications currently.
 

Frank Dernie

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I have 3 Devialet Silver Phantoms, one pair configured for stereo and the single one mono in another room. Once the firmware was de-bugged (they were launched prematurely for their software guys IMO) they work pretty well. When they boot they look for the best communication with their Dialog router they can find. They try wired ethernet first, second their built in ethernet over mains and finally wifi. None of mine have wired ethernet, two come up connected by ethernet over mains and work faultlessly. The more remote one comes up connected by wifi and is a bit slower to react and sometimes drops out.
Qobuz and internet radio come by wifi to the Dialog.
TV sound comes by optical spdif to the Dialog and a CD transport is connected by optical spdf to one speaker but distributed by the dialog to whichever room is selected.
The only cables are the power leads. I haven't considered batteries since they need charging, a pita IMO.
 

Ron Texas

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I think the important part is active speakers can get rid of the passive crossovers and slip in some DSP based EQ. The wireless feature is mainly lifestyle.
 

andreasmaaan

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Wifi and speakers are both old technologies. They haven't been traditionally incorporated mostly because there's not much benefit for most people. There's nothing particularly forward-thinking about sticking them together in the same box IMHO.

What do you see as the benefit?
 

Krunok

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I like the idea but don’t like shoe boxes for speakers but I’m on board with active speakers streaming simply from your phone.

It’s hifi no question.

Wow, does that mean your phone supports APTX HD? :)

Btw, true wireless solution would mean that you stream left and right channel to each speaker separately, so they don't need to be interconnected.
 
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