By Steve Faber

The Holy Grail of distributed audio; unlimited zones and unlimited sources, cost effectively. That milestone will be achieved, and soon, through the combination of digital amplification and IP based distribution systems.

There are systems available today that use one or both of these technologies, such as Oxmoor's Zon system and Netlinks' Netstreams product line. The trend will only continue to grow.

The beauty of this approach is that digital music is data, and, as such, can be distributed easily via an Ethernet network.

The traditional concept of zones virtually disappears, as each amplifier on the network gets a unique IP address, enabling an audio stream to be routed to it. When combined with a digital music server, the number of zones is limited only by the ability of the server to serve independent audio streams.

The advent of cost effective digital amplification, produced by companies such as D2 Audio and Flying Mole, allows a small, highly efficient audio amplifier to be located close to the speakers, either in the room or mounted in an electrical box. The logical evolution of this approach is to collocate amplifier with the speaker, creating an active speaker. Additional benefits are realized by incorporating the speaker as part of the circuit. This enables the designer to engineer the speaker and amplifier circuits for optimum performance as a system.

Low powered designs of this nature could take advantage of power over Ethernet (POE), simplifying system wiring by allowing a single CAT-5 cable to be run from the router to the speaker. This would not supply a large amount of power (about 15 watts) due to the constraints of the 24ga conductors used in CAT-5. However, the efficiencies gained by an integrated speaker / amplifier design would mitigate this concern to some degree. This type of system is sufficient for background music applications in many residential environments.

Higher power systems can use the existing speaker wire, in the case of a conventionally wired system, to carry power. It can / does use the existing control cable, since many systems have been wired with CAT-5 to the volume control location, for the data.

Shannen Doherty coming back to '90210' Read full story for latest details. Publ.Date : Sun, 20 Jul 2008 02:11:00 EDT 'Office's' Dwight has very, very good day Rainn Wilson had a good day. Publ.Date : Fri, 18 Jul 2008 11:47:21 EDT Fans pack theaters for late 'Knight' Who would go to midnight showings -- and 3 a.m. showings and 6 a.m. showings -- of "The Dark Knight"? Turns out thousands and thousands of people -- many of whom believe they got more than their money's worth. Publ.Date : Fri, 18 Jul 2008 15:48:09 EDT Sources: Spears, Federline reach custody deal Britney Spears has agreed to allow ex-husband Kevin Federline to retain legal custody of their two children in return for gradually increased visitation, sources close to the troubled pop star told CNN on Friday. Publ.Date : Fri, 18 Jul 2008 20:07:32 EDT Ed McMahon sues hospital over neck injury Read full story for latest details. Publ.Date : Sat, 19 Jul 2008 01:47:35 EDT Data Feed Content for Web Pages Amazon Associate Store

Copyright © 2006 All rights reserved - www.dvd-home-cinema-systemz.co.uk
Real Cinema Sound With A Home Cinema Amplifier