Sonos-Sub Wireless Multi-room Audio Systems

Sonos is still the leader when it comes to wireless, multi-room audio systems. With a dead-easy setup routine, well-designed controller apps, and the ability to play music from both your local stash of MP3s and all the big streaming services, the palindromic home audio supplier is playing with a winning hand.


Now Sonos has released a subwoofer to complement its array of wireless Play speakers and Connect amps. It’s simply called Sub. The $700 powered speaker component isn’t cheap but it does add excellent definition and low-end heft to any existing Sonos system.


The Sub’s glossy, piano-black case is shaped like a big, square doughnut with a rectangular hole in the center. That central cavity is where all the sound is directed. Two 4.5-inch by 7-inch rectangular divers, each with its own class-D amp, face each other from opposing sides of the cavity. The speaker enclosures are ported into the cavity, too, with one port at the top and one at the bottom.


Setup is ridiculously easy. If you already have a Sonos system, just plug the Sub into an outlet wherever you want it to live, fire up your Sonos controller app and add it to your system’s existing mesh network. You can tune the output level and the tonal coloring of the speaker using a simple test suite within the controller app. Setting up an entirely new multi-speaker system is equally as easy, and only involves an extra step or two.


The Sub sounds fantastic. Sonos speakers have always sounded excellent to my ears, and if you’re a fan of the audio your Play or Connect system already puts out, the Sub will only make it sound better. It adds just the right amount of subtle depth, driving everything below about 90Hz, and enhances all different kinds of music. The amount of detail in the default settings to be a bit too understated, so its better to use iPhone app to crank up the output levels. All the necessary adjustments can be made using your phone or tablet, which is refreshing.


The price is very high. And  you can buy a subwoofer as good as this one for far less than $700. But you’re not paying the premium to get superior audio quality, you’re shelling out for the Sonos experience — the easy setup, the plethora of music choices, and the joy of having multiple powered speaker components all working in concert without wires and without a controller amp.


And since it only works with Sonos systems, it only makes sense if you’re a “Sonos person.” But provided you’re already comfortable with paying the company’s high prices, the Sub is a worthy addition to your wireless rig.


Positeve - Sound is excellent, on par with the rest of Sonos’ speakers. Well-designed dual-driver subwoofer with dual class-D amps offer efficient and distortion-free boom. Sleek looks make the 16-inch-tall box disappear into your ultra-modern decor. Just over 6 inches tall when laid flat, so it can slip under a couch or table.


Negative - That’s a lot of Simoleons. The tall, square-shaped doughnut design can be too bulky for some rooms, even laid flat.

Microsoft Research Team Developed FAR Technology

Microsoft wants to help you sword fight without the physical risks of getting stabbed. The company’s solution? A team at Microsoft Research has created a hardware localization technology that enables you to play a multi-player sword fighting game using only smartphones.

No, you won’t need to attach any crazy lasers or peripheral accessories to make it work. The team’s aptly named SwordFight game requires only the existing hardware in most shipping smartphones. But it’s also not quite as simple as an app like Star Wars: Lightsaber Duel.

“There’s a lot of technology now that allows phones to connect. But if you want to enable games that have a more active flavor, then you need more,” Thomas Moscibroda, a Lead Researcher in the Mobile & Sensing Systems Research Group at Microsoft Research Asia, told Wired. “What you need is a technology that allows mobile devices to localize each other. If I move, I need to know how close your phone is next to me.”

Moscibroda and his colleagues on the Microsoft Research team have developed a technology called FAR. It’s a new sound-ranging scheme that makes it possible for a smartphone to locate another smartphone by measuring sound. One phone sends out a chirp, and a second phone determines the distance and the position of the first phone by measuring the time it takes for the chirp to travel to its speaker.

In SwordFight, two players aim their phones toward each other, and try to jab at the other person’s handset. When one player’s phone strikes within 15 centimeters of the other player’s phone, the second player loses a point. It’s as if there are imaginary swords, albeit very tiny ones, jutting out from each device. With the help of a phone’s accelerometer and digital compass, the game can tell which opponent did the striking. But what’s unique is the fact that the phones can know how close they are to one another.

The process of measuring distance with sound is nothing new. But the Microsoft team created faster, more accurate algorithms built on top of the core processing principles. Traditional techniques can take about one second to turn around a measurement, David Chu, one of the Microsoft researchers on the SwordFight project told us. But in that one second, a person can move his arms up to 4 meters.

“If you think about the fact that you could only take one measurement per second, you could have an error of 4 meters. We’ve been able to improve that, so that we can go 12 samples per second and theoretically up to 22 samples per second,” Chu said. “On average, based on our testing, we can actually achieve within 2-centimeter accuracy.”

In essence, the technology is incredibly fast, allowing users to play an interactive, phone-to-phone game in real time. But it isn’t limited to just a silly sword fighting game. The researchers were first inspired to create this localization technology to make games more interactive, but they see other potential applications.

“Overall, there’s really a broad applicability to it. We’re not simply talking about phones. A fundamental part of the research that we’ve done is not tied to any particular operating system or anything like that,” Chu said.

All a device needs to use the FAR technology is a speaker and a microphone — components that the vast majority of modern-day tablets, PCs and phones come with.

Unfortunately, you won’t get these capabilities on your phone anytime soon. In theory, SwordFight could be released as an app on Windows Phone or other platforms, but the Microsoft Research team has no current plans to release FAR or its SwordFight game to the general public.

The technology still faces challenges. For example, the chirping noises the phone sends are very noticeable, because smartphone mics and speakers only support audible frequency range. (One solution is to make the chirps part of a game’s music.) Another challenge: Users can easily block their mics or speakers, causing inaccurate measurements.

Moscibroda, Chu and the rest of the Microsoft Research team plan on further developing the technology to address these issues and create more prototype games and applications. They’ve already created another game called ChaseCat, which uses the same technology to let you play a two-player running game where one person attempts to get within a certain distance of another user to score points.

“We’ve seen some other developers taking the underlying technology in a completely different direction than what we had thought of,” Chu said. “We think there is a healthy amount of uses in gaming and outside.”

Google Started to Ship Pre-orders Nexus 7 Tablet

Nexus 7 Tablet

To all of you who ordered a Nexus 7 in the last few weeks, you can expect a 7-inch package delivery on your doorstep soon. Google announced on Friday that it has started shipping the pre-orders of its first self-branded tablet. Google made the announcement in a cute and rhyming Google+ post: “Locked and loaded, ready to play: we’ve started shipping +Nexus 7 pre-orders today!” The company first unveiled the Nexus 7 tablet at Google I/O at the end of June, along with the Nexus Q and Android Jelly Bean. Pre-orders opened up at that time to anyone who wanted to shell out the very reasonable $200 for Google’s first tablet. But those who attended Google I/O got to take home the Nexus 7 earlier than the rest. And the device, designed by Google and manufactured by Asus, has already received praise for hitting a sweet spot in terms of price, build quality and media capabilities. Though the Nexus 7 directly competes with the Kindle Fire, which shares the same 7-inch form factor, Wired reporter Nathan Olivarez-Giles found that the Nexus 7 outperforms the Fire on several levels. Amazon, however, already has plans to release a refreshed Kindle Fire soon, according to several reports. And if rumors prove true, Apple also has a 7-inch iPad in the works. It will be interesting to watch how this new, smaller-form tablet arena plays out. For now, Google’s Nexus 7 is a top contender and it will arrive in even more hands very soon.