Long time readers know that we like to celebrate innovation here at the SPARK Microsystems blog. When industry leaders come to market with bold new technology visions, it’s in our DNA to honor their achievements.
Today, we’d like to celebrate another innovator and leader, and in this case, they are also a SPARK customer and collaborator.
Sonus Faber, the prestigious Italian manufacturer of handcrafted speakers, headphones, and other high-end audio equipment, recently announced its Duetto active wireless speakers to much fanfare. At the heart of these impeccably designed speakers, you’ll find SPARK UWB technology.
The Duetto speaker system arrives with a wealth of audio source inputs, including optical, HDMI and RCA/Phono, complemented with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity to enable streaming from smartphones and other devices, with native support for the major streaming services and protocols.
Sonus Faber’s design team faced a major challenge, however, when it came to designing the communications link between the two independent speakers. Wired connectivity was ruled out immediately for these sleek, strictly wireless speakers, and Bluetooth and 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi are plagued with performance and interference issues.
Sonus Faber’s designers surmounted this seemingly impossible challenge with SPARK UWB connectivity. It’s the only short-range wireless solution in commercial production today that’s capable of achieving high-quality, lossless audio delivery with imperceptible latency and immunity to the interference issues that arise with the abundance of 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi connected home devices.
A MAJOR INDUSTRY MILESTONE
Sonus Faber’s Duetto system is groundbreaking on multiple levels. For one thing, it’s the company’s very first active stereo wireless loudspeaker system, built upon 40 years of Sonus Faber high-fidelity audio engineering prowess.
What’s more, the new Duetto wireless speakers sound exquisite. Resonant, pristine sound that’s faithful to the audio source – faithful to what the musicians and artists we love intended it to sound like.
But don’t take our word for it, check out some of the headlines to emerge from the Duetto product launch! Here’s a headline that’s near and dear to SPARK’s heart, from Forbes: “Sonus Faber’s Duetto Active Wireless Speakers Are The Best Way To Listen Without Wires.”
The best way to listen without wires. This is SPARK’s calling card. SPARK UWB delivers the performance advantages of wired connectivity – high data throughput and ultra-low latency – wirelessly for the first time. And this is achieved at extremely low power.
Per Forbes senior contributing editor Mark Sparrow, “Active wireless speakers can sound a bit muddy, but the Duetto sound as good as any wired pair of speakers I’ve ever heard thanks to UWB.”
Thanks to SPARK UWB. That’s the other important thing that’s unique about Sonus Faber Duetto wireless speakers. This headline from Simon Cohen of Digital Trends says it all: “Sonus Faber’s Duetto are the first wireless speakers to use UWB.”
Per Simon, “Compared to Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, which are now household names, ultra-wideband (UWB) is an almost totally unknown technology. It’s understandable, as UWB is comparatively brand new. And yet, with its technical superiority over Wi-Fi and Bluetooth for some applications, the Duetto might be the first to employ it, but won’t be the last.”
In other words, history has been made. To our knowledge, Sonus Faber’s Duetto wireless speaker system is the first commercially available audio product to leverage UWB technology.
But it won’t be the last.
A NEW ERA IN AUDIO
We congratulate Sonus Faber for their technical achievement and vision. They have broken a major barrier in premium-quality, wireless audio delivery, and they’ve made history in the process.
SPARK is proud to play a part in the Duetto design, enabling the high-performance, low latency wireless link between the two Duetto speakers, while sidestepping the interference and congestion issues inherent to 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi. SPARK UWB enables audio bit depths up to 24 bits and sample rates up to 96 kHz wirelessly. There’s no compression or decompression needed or applied, and the raw audio data is transmitted with latency as low as 5 milliseconds to achieve pristine, high-quality lossless audio.
Readers interested in learning more about the recent Sonus Faber news are invited to check out the news coverage and reviews at Forbes, Digital Trends, AudioXpress, TechRadar, What HiFi?, ecoustics and elsewhere around the web.
Watch this space, SPARK blog readers. History is being made here.
SPARK UWB Makes History in Industry’s First UWB Powered Consumer Audio Devices