We have been seeing wirelessly connected speakers for quite some time now, mainly using the Bluetooth technology. Although convenient, Bluetooth technology has its limitations because of bandwidth and range. The first to overcome this was Sonos who introduced Wi-Fi based wireless speaker system with their SonosNet mesh-networking technology. Several others followed, such as DTS’s Play-Fi, DLNA or Digital Living Network Alliance, and Apple AirPlay among the leading few. The most recent is the Google Cast protocols to allow sending audio over Wi-Fi in different ways. However, the lack of standardization gives consumers several choices.
Next few years will see key players taking the center stage in wireless audio. Among these will be Sony, Harman, Bose, Sonos, Google, and Amazon, among a few others. Amazon has already made its mark with the highly successful Amazon Echo, a voice-enabled speaker and virtual assistant. It is rivaled by the Google Home device, which works like a smart-home control center and a virtual assistance as well. By pivoting round the voice-enabled interactive products, the market is offering users a choice of looking away from the phone screens for some time of the day.
The key challenge for voice-enabled systems will be the design of the microphone-array, as these will be crucial to allow the device to accurately interpret the users voices both in the near- as well as far-field scenarios. Amazon’s product has an excellent voice-listening capability.
On the other end of the spectrum of products are the wireless headsets, headphones, and earbuds. Although most use Bluetooth and BLE or Bluetooth Low Energy, some will be using Wi-Fi in the near future. For instance, Apple has introduced its wireless AirPods. Therefore, such wireless hearables will be coming up strongly. These products will be governed by the requirements of super-low current consumption and long battery life.
For OEMs introducing multi-channel and multi-room audio systems such as 5.1, 7.1 and others, the key challenge will be delivering an audio stream synchronized to all the devices on the network. Systems will need time-stamped algorithms for all packets entering or leaving for ensuring perfect synchronizing of the audio output to the speakers. Different nodes on the network will have varying latency, and the OEMs will need to address these, to keep the system in synch for both over the air as well as through the system channels.
There is extensive fragmentation among Bluetooth audio standards. For instance, there are Miracast, DLNA, DTS Play-Fi, SonosNet, Spotify Connect, Google Cast, Apple’s AirPlay, A2DP, and others. All have their own differentiating features, with business leaders pushing their own ecosystems for their business and technological reasons. However, these remain popular as they cater to different segments of users.
Although Bluetooth is very popular, easy to use, low power, low-cost, and a wide range of devices has the technology built-in already, it is limited by range and the inability to handle more than one device at a time. AirPlay works only with Apple hardware and software. Google Cast, Play-Fi, and Spotify Connect work with Wi-Fi, and these enable streaming audio over longer distances and to multiple speakers at the same time.
