The future is wireless

 Founder and Chief Designer of
PSB Speakers, Paul Barton.
 
The future of hi-fi and Home Theatre, according to Founder and Chief Designer of PSB Speakers International, Paul Barton, will be wireless.


PSB's visionary designers are already working on a 5.1 system that will receive signals wirelessly from a control box that will be linked via HDMI cable to a BluRay player, Paul said.


The control box will transmit the 5.1 channels to the speakers which will be 'intelligent' enough to sense the listener's position via a command on the remote control and communicate with each other to calibrate the individual speaker's volume so that the listener will get the full 5.1 effects in a balanced way. It will also be possible to include the Audyssey MultEQ room correction feature in the wireless system.


The wireless network will be in the 5 GigaHz region and the bandwidth is wide enough to handle hi-res uncompressed files.


"Since the system is for 5.1 signals, it can certainly be used for two-channel listening. The trend is for active speakers and wireless connections," said Paul.


PSB's active speakers will make use of the Direct Digital Feedback Amplifier technology developed by British semiconductor company, Diodes Zetex Ltd, which is already implemented in the NAD M2 Direct Digital amplifier.


"You are talking about a system that does not need speaker cables or interconnects. What will happen to companies that make speaker cables and interconnects?" I asked.


"Well, they can still make power cords. You still need power cords," Paul said.


The founder of PSB Speakers was in town last week for the Kuala Lumpur International AV show and when I spoke to him, he was with his Malaysian distributor Aiven Liew, managing director of A & L Audio Station.


Paul added that while music file downloads are changing the industry and there may come a day when optical storage media become obsolete, he is not too worried as he makes speakers.


"The source may change, but people will still need speakers," he said.

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