Active Room Speaker

Qualcomm Introduces Two Next Generation Sound Platforms – S3 gen 3 and S5 gen 3.

Enterprise, Gaming, Home, Technology, Wearable Devices / By Peter Cooney / April 2, 2024 / Active Room Speaker, Audio Eyewear, Augmented Reality Headset, Enterprise Headset, Enterprise Speaker, Gaming Headset, Mixed Reality Headset, Portable Speaker, PSAP, Qualcomm, Radio, Smart Speaker, soundbar, Tensilica, Tensilican, True Wireless Stereo Earbuds, Virtual Reality Headset, Vivo, Wireless Ear Cup, Wireless Fully Enclosed, Wireless Mono Headset, Wireless Tethered Earbuds

Qualcomm has announced upgrades to some of its sound platform chips, with the S3 gen 3 and S5 gen 3. Here we look at the major changes made. The S3 is aimed at mid-tier audio devices. Looking at the specs for gen 2 and gen 3 the major upgrades on the previous generation include: The S3 also gives customers access to 3rd party solutions from the Qualcomm Voice …

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HARMAN Acquires Roon

Home, Player / By Peter Cooney / November 29, 2023 / Active Room Speaker, Google, Harman, Roon, Samsung, Smart Speaker, Sonos, Sony

November 27, 2023, Harman announced the acquisition of Roon, a music software company most well-known for its Roon app. Roon Labs was founded in 2015, but its journey in music technology began much earlier, in 2004. The founders were involved in developing music software for companies like Sooloos, Meridian Audio, and HP before establishing Roon …

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Bang & Olufsen Unveils Its New Beolab 8 Wireless Speaker

Home, Product / By Peter Cooney / September 14, 2023 / Active Room Speaker, B&O, Beolab, DTS, Portable Speaker, Razer, Sonos, THX

Beolab 8—the attractive new room speaker offering from Bang & Olufsen—is now being welcomed to homes. The news comes as Sonos also welcomes a predecessor to its battery-powered lineup, the Sonos Move 2. The Beolab 8 comes with a few standout features, for example beam-width control which adapts to listening profiles. Also UWB (ultra-wide band) …

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RadioGPT

Enterprise, Home, Technology, Wearable Devices / By Joe Murray / March 27, 2023 / Active Room Speaker, Bone Conduction Headphone, Futuri, Portable Speaker, Professional Microphone, RadioGPT, Smart Speaker, True Wireless Stereo Earbuds, USB Microphone, Wired Headphones Packaged, Wired Headphones Retail, Wireless Ear Cup, Wireless Fully Enclosed, Wireless Mono Headset, Wireless Tethered Earbud

Futuri, a US company based in Cleveland, Ohio, has developed an AI-driven radio technology called RadioGPT that can broadcast voice, music, local news stories, and even create social media posts. The company claims that all content created by RadioGPT can be localized to the area where it is broadcasted. RadioGPT can use AI-generated voices to host shows, create scripts, and even …

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Sonos releases new line of speakers

Enterprise, Home, Product / By Peter Cooney / March 2, 2023 / Active Room Speaker, Enterprise Speaker, Portable Speaker, Smart Speaker, Sonos, USB Speakerphone

Sonos has announced its new line of speakers. The Sonos Era 300 and 100 are coming in March. One huge update from previous Sonos speakers is that you can now line-in, and use Bluetooth. The Sonos non-portable range has previously only worked through Wi-Fi. The announcement that the Sonos sound will be enabled to other …

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World’s first beamforming soundbar tracks your head

Home, Product / By Joe Murray / February 16, 2023 / Active Room Speaker, Dolby, Razer, Smart Speaker, soundbar, THX

The soundbar market does not enjoy the rapid growth it once did. Even though this has been a market showing superiority to home theatre in box systems—and even AVRs—the trend is a slowing in shipment growth. The use of wireless (sometimes battery powered) speakers incorporated into a multiroom setup may be a good trade off as this …

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New Netflix spatial audio powered by Sennheiser

Home, Technology / By Peter Cooney / February 14, 2023 / Active Room Speaker, Dolby, Netflix, Sennheiser, Smart TV, soundbar

What seems to be the follow on from an announcement in July ’22, it has been publicised for the second time that Netflix will be adding AMBEO spatial audio—powered by Sennheiser—to some of its titles on the streaming platform. After recent price hikes, it’s good to see Netflix adding additional value to the service. Albeit interesting …

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Infineon fosters the adoption of its innovative multilevel Class D audio amplifier technology through an ecosystem of associated partners

Home, Technology / By Peter Cooney / January 30, 2023 / Active Room Speaker, Eleven Engineering, Infineon, MERUS, Portable Speaker, Smart Speaker

Infineon has announced it is building an ecosystem of partners to help drive its MERUS™ class D amplifier into new markets. This particular announcement focuses on a partnership with Eleven Engineering and the use of class D amplifiers in battery-powered speakers. With the touted 1/10 idle power possible with MERUS multilevel switching technology there are …

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Amazon is on pace to lose $10 billion this year from Alexa and other devices

Home, Player / By Peter Cooney / January 16, 2023 / Active Room Speaker, Amazon, Apple, Baidu, Smart Speaker

Amazon’s Worldwide Digital business unit apparently had a $3 billion operating loss in the first quarter of 2022. This is not all related to Alexa, this business unit also includes Prime Video (and more). This is backed up by reports in 2018 that stated Alexa and Echo lost around $5 billion in that year. For …

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Bluetooth SIG launches Auracast

Home, Mobile Devices, Technology, Wearable Devices / By Peter Cooney / June 10, 2022 / Active Room Speaker, Auracast, Bone Conduction Headphone, High End Smartphone, Low Cost Smartphone, Mid Range Smartphone, Smart Speaker, Smart TV, soundbar, True Wireless Stereo Earbuds, Wired Headphones Packaged, Wired Headphones Retail, Wireless Ear Cup, Wireless Fully Enclosed, Wireless Mono Headset, Wireless Tethered Earbuds

The Bluetooth SIG launched Auracast™ this week. This is the brand name for the broadcast audio ability enabled by LE Audio. It has been eagerly waited for by the industry and is very interesting new way to use Bluetooth. Regarding branding, this reminds me of previous attempts by technology organisations to stir up consumer …

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