NICT develops network-connectable speakers Audio/Video / Other Posted by sar7501 on Jun 28, 2005 - 05:57 AM |
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Some groovy new speaker technology from Japan's National Institute of Information and Communications Technology. The NetSpeaker connects to any PC-based wired or wireless network and plays back sound output via a virtual sound device driver. Commercialisation of the speaker technology is in progress.  The National Institute of Information and Communications Technology [1] (NICT) announced on June 27 that they have developed a speaker that can be directly connected to a computer network. There are many possible uses for the speaker which can receive and play audio from a PC via a wired or wireless network. The speaker, which connects to a standard LAN port, is recognised as a virtual sound device by a Windows PC and is controlled using a special driver and control software. The virtual sound device converts sound data to the speaker's sound format in real-time. The control software takes care of transferring sound output to the selected output speaker. The output to multiple speakers can be selected and switched independently. For example, a particular pair of speakers can be combined to produce stereo playback. As power is supplied by the Ethernet cable, only one cable is necessary to connect the speakers. Efficient sound processing minimises any delay and makes simultaneous sound playback in conjunction with video possible. For example, using a notebook PC, it becomes possible to enjoy high quality music output by simply switching the sound output to the virtual sound device corresponding to a network-connected speaker. Progress is being made towards commercialisation of the speaker technology and the release of products containing the technology can be expected. The network speaker will be on display at the 2nd Next Generation Wireless Technology Showcase [2] from July 133-15 at Tokyo Big Sight [3]. Inspired by: http://www.itmedia.co.jp/lifestyle/articles/0506/27/news071.html [4] News release: http://www2.nict.go.jp/pub/whatsnew/press/h17/050627/050627.html [5] |
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This article is from TechJapan http://www.techjapan.com/ The URL for this story is: http://www.techjapan.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=1022 Links in this article [1] http://www.nict.go.jp/overview/index.html [2] http://www.ric.co.jp/expo/wj2005/home.html [3] http://www.bigsight.jp/english/ [4] http://www.itmedia.co.jp/lifestyle/articles/0506/27/news071.html [5] http://www2.nict.go.jp/pub/whatsnew/press/h17/050627/050627.html |