Sonical, the company pioneering the principles of Headphone 3.0, and XMOS, a tech semiconductor company leading the intelligent IoT are have unveiled a joint development that promises ‘a quantum shift in wireless audio quality and put the feature set of wearable audio devices in the hands of the consumer’.
The development focuses on a wireless dongle which will enable 96kHz, 24-bit linear audio to stream wirelessly from a PC to a headset or other playback device. The wireless technology can be low-power Bluetooth enabled (BLE) or ultra-wideband (UWB). With UWB, in addition to precise reproduction of high-resolution audio, the technology will also support latencies under 5ms. These performance figures render the solution capable of addressing the very demanding MI and live performance markets.
‘The platform unlocks a wide range of new product experiences using a low-latency wireless connection for premium audio devices,’ says Sonical CEO, Gary Spittle. The DSP is a critical component as it makes products a lot more than wireless DACs. By making the device ‘Appable’ through downloadable plug-ins, we have enabled limitless possibilities.’
Prior to Headphone 2.0, wireless devices were hard configured at point of manufacture and limited (primarily due to Bluetooth Classic) in terms of latency and audio quality. The joint development between Sonical and XMOS breaks down these barriers to improve ther user experience for device owners, while simultaneously opening up previously unattainable markets.
‘The development of the wireless (UWB/BLE) dongle will usher the next generation of audio experiences and use cases for various devices including headsets,’ says XMOS EVP Marketing & Product Management, Aneet Chopra. ‘The device benefits from the low latency multiple threads available with our xcore.ai platform, simplifying the integration of critical DSP functions with predictable hard real time execution. This is great for audio platforms like Sonical. We look forward to the roll-out of this solution and seeing the broad range of subsequent applications.’
