The Future of PC-Audio: Interview With Keith Kowal 260
red_ed writes "The Noise Report have an interview with Keith Kowal from VIA technologies' Audio division about the future of PC audio. Here's a snippet: 'I think the next big thing will be the widespread adoption of wireless speakers and headphones--cause none of us like a tangle of wires. From a PC infrastructure point of view I can easily see support for these devices being integrated right into the PC.'"
power? (Score:3, Interesting)
My speakers will always require some wires because I don't want to power them with batteries.
To go wireless with any PC, get yourself a nice little stereo FM transmitter and tune in from the next room. Monster cable's model for cars works excellently. The cheap battery powered model from CompUSA looks great with that aluminum case, but it did not broadcast in stereo for me. I hope they fix that because it was perfect otherwise with an external power jack for an included car plug or any cheap transformer and AAA battery for walking around. You can be sure that others, such as the Belkin models for $15 at Walmart, will work or one that does will find it's way to the shelves soon.
Why did I want to buy another set of speakers again? So that someone could slip the RIAA encrypted streaming wet dream on me? No thanks.
Major security issues (Score:4, Interesting)
Last thing I need is some employee using wireless audio to download corporate data to his car out in the parking lot. Worse, a virus using it to send corporate data to anyone within scanning distance.
I want 5.1+ wireless at home so I can pipe it through my stereo in the next room, but for security's sake, if you put it on the motherboard make sure I can disable it in the BIOS.
Re:About time (Score:1, Interesting)
As long as there is interoperability with Unix and similar systems and embedded systems, there is a future. Microsoft has no sound future. (read it both ways) It is _extremely_ likely all will be reverse-engineered, if necessary to acheive this. Hackers are generally very skeptical audiophiles that know cat5 cable is better than 'beastie wire' for speakers, etc. We are likely to assure this equipment is used to its best. Its HIGH quality, not HiFi. (Its WLAN, not WiFi, too.
Personally I like my active monitors (Genelec) connected to a EUR 25,-- soundcard with FreeBSD running on an amd64. Headphones can be useful but that is most likely an embedded solution. A small radio unit in an "Ipod" (It will always be called Ipod -- like "Walkman" is quite generic for any portable Philips cassette player with headphones.) will do wonders. Bluetooth is dirt-cheap radio, but the standard bandwidth must increase to produce convincing sound in a good set of headphones. (24*2*48000 + overhead, at a minimum.)
Sure, that is easy to make. Lets hope its done.
Re:wireless? Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
No not hardware, but space
Until they can eliminate the rear speakers (Carver Sonic Holography style) it will not catch on except with the people that desperately want it and are willing to sacrafice style for function.
I am hoping that PC audio would come to a standard. all PC audio talks in X way and Y way.. all the extra stuff can talk through the OpenAL interface.
much like a video card. all video cards give you a display without a driver. why cant audio do the same?
Let's revitalize audio synthesizers! (Score:5, Interesting)
Then let's make some serious musical instruments like additive synths like K5 clones along with real exciting and inexpensive controllers that plug into USB and legacy slots.
It's a shame that MIDI equipment never 'took off' in a big way in music equipment sales in the early 1990s. I believe that could have revitalized the retail music store business.
But all the MIDI items offered for sale in that initial market window were completely underdocumented, poorly implememented, terribly supported, and overpriced.
The big manufacturers (Roland, Yamaha, Kawai, and Korg) should have pooled together to offer a $10 MIDI interface for the PC and given away voice editor and sequencer software (including source code) for every model that they offered.
That would have been tough on all the little software companies selling $150 voice editors for synths that sold a total of 5000 units worldwide, but it would have energized the market for synths and tone modules to the level of guitars and amps.
Today all the $100 voice editor companies are gone and the advanced $1600 synths of 1990 are sold on eBay for $50-$200. The only software still available for them is Atari ST programs run on the PC through an emulator (the STeem emulator).
The rare MIDI auxiliary device (such as controller pedals or switcher) gets sold at an undervalued price due to the uncertainity of whether it can still be used.
If I had an extra million dollars and an extra twenty IQ points then I would make a serious attempt to revitalize the MIDI industry with open-source programs and equipment selling at 1/20th the cost that it did when the first MIDI wave ended ten years ago. The fact that the music equipment industry is still run by nitwits like Roland (who are still fighting attempts to open-source the MT-32 which was obsolete 15!! years ago) just fills me with despair.
Let's have universal Audio over IP speakers (Score:3, Interesting)
I wrote up a description of ethernet speakers and the ideal home A/V setup [templetons.com] some time ago mostly to talk about the broadcast flag's effect on the design, but it's still the right way to go.
Re:The real future (Score:1, Interesting)
A good set of headphones is probably the best overall.
Besides, no one said your speakers had to be near your computer.
Re:Wireless with wall plug (Score:3, Interesting)
So instead of wireless plug-in speakers, I propose sending a 5.1 digital audio stream over the electrical wires, buy 5 speakers, and each would have a D/A converter and can be set to play one of 5 channels. Easy as pie; one wire, no analog degredation because of long/cheap speaker cables, and no wireless interference.
I wonder how much bandwidth you could squeeze through electrical wiring. I bet it's quite a bit (no pun). So maybe you could have something like 20 channels, and you can tune any room of the house to the audio output of one of many sources. Since it would come in as digital, distance would not mean a loss of quality.
(And while we're at it, could we do video the same way???)
Re:The real future (Score:3, Interesting)
Plus, there's nothing like using MIDI to make the faders on your mixer dance...