This instance of Alive Matters is no longer the official “thread”.  Please refer to:

http://www.alivematters.com, or

http://www.wirelessaudioblog.com

The new location is privately hosted, and no longer using the wordpress.com free blogging service (which I highly recommend).  I just wanted to respect wordpress.com’s terms of use, as clearly some of the posts on this site, I concede, supplement commercial activities.  I will leave the archive here as long as possible, but no guarantees!

SkypeJournal’s recent series on Skype’s forward moving strategies included a discussion on the relevance of hardware. Well this Christmas, a piece of hardware near and dear to my heart will be ready to ship. I’ve written about the FREETALK in another post, so no need to repeat.

The nicest thing about this device… it is a very simple and elegant hardware solution that imporves the way *current* Skype users experience voice chat.

FREETALK is for the hear and now.  It does not distract you from the now.  It does not promise a future that is not ready.  It does not try to pretend you are in the past.

1. Other types of Skype hardware struggle with gear that is trying to bring skype to Skype-non-users. Make it look like a normal desk telephone, and give the simple number dialing usage model a home on the skype network. Harder sell. Gotta sell on lower cost. Gotta teach people new features. People who would get this are likely more attached to their PCs.

2. Or bring Skype to platforms where potential users are using a different telephony service. Run Skype on my mobile phone, now you’ve got to be better than the experience of making call on my mobile.

This Thanksgiving holiday season, I’ve seen more Black Friday chatter on the web than I can remember ever seeing in the past. From Gizmodo, Engadget, Google ads to ad hoc urls like http://www.blackfriday.info, it’s endless.

Obviously some deals are better than others. The one that caught my eye of course is the one offered by Best Buy for the Rocketfish RF-WHTIB wireless rear speaker kit. At $79.99, this is 20% off from it’s normal retail price. At $99, the commentors talk about what a great value this product is… so at $79, this is a steal.

Dell, my old employer launched the Dell XPS One.  Not bad.  It’s like a iMac, except add some decent speakers and a phatty Windows Media Center remote.  I’m tempted to pick one of these up, since pretty much the only Dell stuff I’ve been buying in recent history are their desktop monitors.  In fact, I use a 24 inch widescreen LCD monitor from Dell with my Mac mini.

Which brings me to the point of this post.  What has Apple done since the iMac that has been innovative for the desktop?  The Mac mini was close, but small form factor PCs were around then as well.  Even though Apple’s was probably the coolest.  The iMac was refreshed earlier this year, but it was merely cosmetic.  And now it’s been around so long, and successfully so, that the Dell, the maker of what’s mainstream, has adapted the innovative PC-in-a-Panel architecture and slapped their “cool-guy brand” on it.

Come on Apple.  You’ve been quiet.   Been too busy developing phones, touch-screens iPods, and switching your PC lineup to Intel?  Where is a new notebook to lust after?  Where is a new architecture to disrupt what we think is normal?  This is what consumers expect from you, whether you like it or not.  There are rumors of a tablet.  Or for a ultra-mobile notebook.

Give me a good reason to figure out clever ways to have an “accident” with my current notebook, so I can get a new ride.

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Finally. Our first wireless stereo headset! It is available just in time for the holidays. If you use Skype more than 5 times a week, this headset will be your new best friend, I can guarantee it. I’ve been carrying my proto with me for the better part of this year, and it’s held up relatively well in my bag, taking many beatings. It sounds great, and works flawlessly. The range on FREETALK’s version is just over 35 feet. It will best the two other cordless options shown on this page. They are both based on Bluetooth… stop yawning, you’ll want to hear this.

People often ask how we compare to Bluetooth… often phrased as, “why wouldn’t I just use Bluetooth?” The few (powerful) reasons are:

1. FREETALK requires no driver installations. Freetalk is plug & play. Plug it in, wait for Mac OS or Windows to recognize it, and about 20 seconds later you are off to the races.
2. FREETALK achieves better than 30 feet of range. Our system’s wireless audio coding gives you a few more meters than BT can at the same transmit power. Just try it. You’ll get 35-40 feet in most conditions, and up to 60 feet in very clean RF interference & obstacle environments.
3. FREETALK gives you high fidelity stereo audio & wideband voice!!! The Freetalk headset natively supports 48 kHz uncompressed stereo audio to the headset, and 16 kHz wideband voice from the headset’s mic…. wait for it… at the same time. Boom. (Gamers rejoice – use it for World of Warcraft, Ventrillo, you name it) You have to hear it to believe it. With BT, you’re required to use a different profile (A2DP), which does not support simultanous usage of the microphone, AND it compresses the hell out of the audio using a very crude compression scheme called SBC (sub-band coding). About as clean as 96 kbps mp3 in best cases.
4. FREETALK costs less. Don’t even get me started.

Anyways, let’s hear about what you think. Check it out, and report back here. I’m pretty sure you’ll be asking straight-away, “why hasn’t this existed before?”

At Brian’s Brain, Dipert was one of the first bloggers to write about the Rocketfish RF-WHTIB. He had some issues with an early production example, but has since come back to it after realizing the grass ain’t so green on the 5.8 GHz side of the fence. So far so good.

The experience he had with the 5.8 solution will become more and more common. People get frustrated with sub-standard 2.4 GHz getting interfered with by other 2.4 GHz systems. So they figure, “I’ll just change RF frequencies and all my problems will be solved.” Well let me offer a few points to consider before you, too, make this leap of faith:

1. The 2.4 GHz spectrum is popular because it is a technological sweet-spot. 2.4 GHz has the least amount of regulatory conflicts world-wide, and thus it sees incorporation in products/technology platforms that are destined for global/higher volumes, and thus can lead to better economies of scale – making 2.4 GHz a more economic option for end-users on the average.  5.8 GHz is the newest ISM band, and across regions there are inconsistencies that drive lots of FUD thru the industry.  OEMs don’t like this, and thus adoption is and solutions are less common, and suffer from negative economies of scale.  Also 2.4 GHz is typically lower power at the circuit level, and so you can get smaller form factors and longer battery lives… also generally good things in 2.4’s favor.
2. The notion of RF co-existence is a concept worth introducing and discussing. Basically when you consider a system, like WLAN, or more specifically 802.11g, you need to think about two things. One, how it causes performance degradation to other co-located systems, and how it’s own performance is degraded by other co-located systems. Like any healthy relationship, one must understand that each must be considerate… i.e. attention must be paid both ways. The initial impression that Brian had, and many others harbor, against 2.4 GHz is that anything in 2.4 GHz will degrade his precious 802.11g network. Think FHSS 2.4 GHz cordless telephones. Think Microwave ovens. Think like Mr Hasty, a quick to act wireless audio system designer… what’s important to Mr. Hasty? That his audio sound good in the presence of other 2.4 Ghz radios. If you stop there, and design, you end up with wireless audio systems that stomp(!) on WLAN and others, like Bluetooth, and FHSS telephones, and many others. This happens because Mr. Hasty likes to throw power to the transmitter and send lots of extra overhead into the spectrum to ensure his audio gets there. And sometimes it does. But like Sherman marching thru Georgia, the ends maybe don’t justify the means. Bottom-line… not all 2.4 GHz system focus on co-existance. They place a priority on survival. AvneraAudio knows the economics of 2.4 GHz, and thus wanted to build a wireless audio system that was not only designed to survive, but also to be a good neighbor. If you let Avnera’s system into your world, it will avoid WLAN, and BT will avoid us. Microwaves are easy to spot, and so we move away from that too. And Cordless phones are loud but forgiving, like a shouting person in a crowded place… So we just filter it out, and focus on our more polite conversation until the egotist pipes down and goes away. Even more Bottom-line: Smart design is needed for co-existence. So Mr Hasty should have paused and asked, how do we survive, but not at the expense of others…. would-have-been-result: consumers’ rejoice.
3. Just cause you buy something with a 5.8 GHz radio doesn’t mean you avoid co-existence issues. It only means you avoid interference from 2.4 GHz systems!!! Well, I got news for ya, it ain’t like 5.8 GHz is all cookies and cream. You got messy cordless telephones, you got 802.11a, you got a lot a stuff… Again, if you go 5.8 GHz, why go there with a communications system technology that was unproven in the 2.4 GHz domain. You are only transferring your conflicts to a different arena. Traditional wireless audio vendors think a solution to poor 2.4 GHz performance is to offer a 5.8 GHz option. Bizz!

The solution is better communication system design, through co-existence. Never have the words of Rodney King (pictured above) been such an inspiration “People, I just want to say, you know, can we all get along?”

Wait a minute: did I just mock a hero Union Army general (which Pavement cemented into my psyche with “Unseen Power of the Picket Fence”, 15 years ago), and take inspiration from a convicted wife-beater? Forget Brian’s brain… what about mine? To think I was talking about good wireless audio system design. Oh, how the lure of the mass market corrupts… militarists and penologists, avert your eyes.

HONG KONG — So for those who can put 2 and 2 and 4 together, it may not come as a suprise that I work for a company called Avnera. I’ve not mentioned it before since we’ve been in “stealth” mode, which has its advantages, no doubt. But it’s also a good thing when the story does get out, and that has begun as we issue our first press release and make some early product announcements with some of our early customers… customers whose products have been much discussed here at Alive Matters. Namely the RF-WHTIB from Rocketfish and the AWD210 from Acoustic Research.

Here’s a list of public information and press coverage of our company and products:

• Official company press release
• “Wireless audio from startup eliminates media room snakes” by Mike Rogoway, The Oregonian
• “Wireless audio wit..out th.. dr..o..p out” by Chris Nuttal, Financial Times
• “Beyond Bluetooth: Manpreet Khaira’s new company cuts the cables” by Aliza Earnshaw, Portland Business Journal
• “Startup tries proprietary path to wireless HiFi” by R. Colin Johnson, EETimes
• “Wireless Speakers: Sound at last?” by Michael Kanellos, CNET News.com
• Photo full-monty on CNET
• Coverage of coverage: “Stirring the wireless stew” on Interconnects
• Coverage of coverage: “Avnera comes out of stealth mode” on OregonStartups
• Coverage of coverage: “Avnera’s backers include new Oregon VC fund” on The Silicon Forest Blog

Additional coverage will be seeping out over the coming days, and most folks around Avnera are happy to be able to tell their families what the late hours have been about for the past 3.5 years.

It’s kinda funny to read how our meticulously crafted and technically-precise pitch has been interpreted and relayed to the masses. The craft of stroytelling and reporting is one I’ve grown up understanding from my father, who was a journalist by training and throughout most his life, lived with the spirit of storytelling. But as a technically-minded, detail-oriented person — who from day two has been continuously tasked with helping craft our “story” — to see what happens as the meat passes through a writer/critic’s gray-matter is a minor roller coaster. But overall, I am gratified that the core of our message has penetrated through. Our technology comes from a fundamentally sound, grounds-up systems-based approach to problem solving, and delivers a wireless audio solution that is robust and easy to use, and probably most important, affordable enough to enable true, mass-market applications. Premium performance, at mainstream prices. That’s why we’ve been able to raise $40+ Million, all on a positive-slope valuation curve, and enable a diversified set of early customer applications. There are still kinks in these muscles as we continue to “get warm”, and there will be growing pains, as anyone with startup experience knows, but it’s been an exciting adventure for a gadget guy who definitely shares the meaty grin of one of our founders, Chris O’Connor (pictured in today’s local rag, captured at the right).

Personally, I look forward to being able to share more about our progress and our technology. If detailed answers are what you seek, or if you wish to design with Avnera, contact corporate via the web. If you’re an interested tech-geek or general consumer, chime in on threads here at Alive Matters, if it’s fit to print, and I don’t smell a rat, you’ll get the most accurate take on matters that I am at liberty to discuss. And again, this blog is not officially affiliated with Avnera, and it will always be my intention to blog what I can and should. And it follows, that whatever opinions I express are strictly my own.

The covers have been taken off our first two product lines, but there is much more to come, so stay tuned…

Logitech ClearChat comfort USB headset is a nice piece.  I really believe in usb headphones and headsets.  They sound amazing, free of hard drive noise, and other audio imperfections you get from the standard headphone jacks on a PC.  Using the USB socket ensures a purely digital stream that is crystal clear and enables cool things like playback controls and volume control from the headset itself via the USB-HID mechanism.  HID stands for human interface device and is a way to add control to the mix.  Keyboards and things like that use HID.  But audio devices that make use of HID opens up many new application possibilities.

I can think of ways to make this experience much better.  How about you?

I bet the World of Warcraft and Skype faithful know exactly what I am talking about.  How can we make the PC audio experience better?

Heh heh. The Q-Bean. For a while our customer has been telling us this thing was going to be huge. What I can say is that while it’s form factor is quirky, and its marketing even quirkier, the usability and sound quality you’ll experience is unmatched.

There are two variants of the Q-Bean.  Basically the main difference is the type of audio transmitter device that it comes with.  The Q-Bean-ST comes with a stereo line-input sender device that can run on batteries or be powered from the wall.  The Q-Bean-U comes with a USB audio sender, and supports a microphone back-channel.

The Q-Bean-U version is simply plug & play, and converts your favorite pair of headphones into a full blown headset targeted at all manner of PC multimedia applications: Music, DVDs, VoIP, gaming, you name it.

One fascinating bundle that LTB Audio managed to cut was with One Voice. One Voice has a voice recognition software add-on for Windows Media Center that allows you to voice command your PC to do all manner of cool things. The bundle includes the Media Center Communicator application software and a Q-Bean-U, and it’s available on Amazon @ $174.99. It can also be bought directly from One Voice @ 174.99.

The Q-Bean has received a few mentions around the internets of late… check out reviews and listings here:

Q-Bean-U on Amazon.com @ $77.00

Q-Bean-ST on Amazon.com @ $85.00

Q-Bean-U on Radioshack.com @ $119.00

Q-Bean-ST on RadioShack.com @ $129.99

Coverage at Engadget

Coverage at CrunchGear

Review at OverclockersClub

Lust at I4U

LTB Audio (finally with a decent looking website) has launched their Q-Bass-USB wireless headset.  Using a plug & play USB-Audio transmitter, the Q-Bass-USB is truly a unique solution for PC multimedia fanatics, as well as PC gamers.  Simultaneously supporting CD-quality, uncompressed stereo audio, 25 ms fixed latency, and wideband, 16 KHz voice back-channel, these headsets are amazingly versatile.  The range and battery life is quite impressive, too.

These headphones have discrete full range drivers and subwoofer drivers.  Each was chosen to optimize frequency response across the entire audible frequency band.  The effect is actually pretty damn impressive.

Another great feature, is the seemless support of USB-HID volume control.  Meaning you can mute, and adjust volume when away from the PC.  The volume level is completely synchronized to the operating system volume level, avoiding the annoyance of multiple volume sliders….

Think about it, you have not seen a comparably equipped device  in the PC audio accessory space.  For now, this is it.

It is available now on Amazon.com @ 135.99.