The past year was a good year for wireless audio. We see growing quantities and even higher forecasts for the next five years. Although everybody is happy about the growth, one still hears a lot of parties in the industry complaining about the diversity of solutions, and the very different solutions per market segment.
We are now noticing that this solution diversity is changing. Below are several trends we’ve noticed recently:
- The high-end audio segment is finally, after years of hesitation, taking streaming audio and wireless audio on board
- The CEDIA segment has adopted wireless, next to the wired home
- The mainstream consumer market is starting to go after Wi-Fi®-enabled speakers and we expect that headphones will follow
- Google Cast™ seems to be establishing itself as the de-facto open standard
- The battle field of music services is seeing a concentration and a shake-out – may the best streaming service win!
StreamUnlimited has created a flexible software stack that caters flexibly for all trends mentioned above. As a special feature, StreamUnlimited has worked with TI on a special enhancement, where in combination with Sitara and WiLink8 it is possible to synchronize two loudspeakers below two microseconds, giving ultra-precise in-room wireless synchronization for left/right speakers providing a high-quality audio experience.
This can be achieved with:
- TI’s WiLink™ 8 Wi-Fi + Bluetooth® combo connectivity device
- StreamUnlimited’s StreamSDK
Furthermore StreamSDK now has:
- Integrated Google Cast
- Integrated Dirac, for room correction
- Integrated music services like Tidal, Airable and a variety of other well-known integrated music services
- Support of WiSA wireless multi-channel technology from Summit
Every software block can be activated or deactivated, creating a wide range of products with the same software stack: from a simple Google Cast speaker to a can-do-everything streaming device for multi-channel multi-room. Depending on the functionality one can choose a cheaper or a higher-performing hardware.
A Wi-Fi audio cape for BeagleBone Black is available as a TI Design reference design for fast prototyping (also usable for ioT applications)
Here are additional resources for more information about wireless audio solutions:
- Whitepaper:Wi-Fi audio: capabilities and challenges
- Whitepaper: Streaming audio: Follow the signal chain
- Blog post: When microseconds count: Enabling Wi-Fi-based multi-speaker systems
- Blog post:Never miss a beat with our multi-room audio solution
- TI Design:TI WiLink 8 Wi-Fi/Bluetooth/Bluetooth Smart audio multi-room cape reference design