Polk and NetStreams Delivering End-to-end Digital Audio

Roughly four years ago, NetStreams was formed, with one of its primary goals to create an end-to-end digital audio solution including IP-enabled powered speakers.

The goal has been realized, with the help of Polk Audio, which uses a NetStreams StreamNet card to bring internetworking capabilities to its LC80IP in-ceiling and LC265IP in-wall speakers.

The speakers, along with NetStreams' DigiLinx digital audio distribution system, are being showcased by one of the few integration companies to install the speakers in a full-fledged showroom -- Midwest Home Media, Burnsville, Minn.

Midwest opened the doors to its 4,500-square-foot showroom -- or show home, as owner Brian Stoll calls it -- in August. Polk and NetStreams founders Matthew Polk and Herman Cardenas flew in for the occasion, and they discussed the evolution of IP-oriented audio.

While the concept is nothing new for NetStreams, whose entire existence is focused on the premise, IP-enabled audio is new for Polk, which has about 40 analog speaker models represented in the Midwest show home. IP speakers, nevertheless, represent a growing interest in the Polk organization.

In the case of the Polk speakers, the integrated StreamNet card includes its own Web server that delivers a browser-based user interface to any networked computer.

Theoretically, users can configure the speakers via any PC-type device and deliver digital music from virtually any source, without the need for an independent multiroom audio system.

Today, however, the speakers are optimized for use with NetStreams' own DigiLinx music system, which incorporates the company's proprietary StreamNet technology.

StreamNet enables the synchronization of music streams across a TCP/IP network, with very low latency -- down to 1 millisecond -- virtually eliminating the echo effect that plagues other whole-house IP-enabled music solutions.

"Getting music across an IP network is not a trivial matter," Polk says. "There is a fundamental difference between data traffic and music."

He explains, that "packets from data can arrive whenever they want. Music must be clocked; it has to arrive on time."

And that timely arrival of music is what StreamNet enables. Currently, only NetStreams and Britain-based Naim Audio incorporate StreamNet into a multiroom audio solution.

"If we choose, we could sell a piece of [StreamNet] software for PCs, but it could only be used with StreamNet-enabled speakers," says Cardenas. "We don't know if we will do that."

Why IP Audio?

Today's StreamNet-enabled solutions are relatively expensive compared to traditional analog systems. Polk's IP-enabled speakers, for example, start at $2,400/pair at retail. So why go IP?

"Analog is a fixed-architecture system," says Polk. "That is unacceptable going forward. IP-enabled speakers are completely flexible, without the user having to do something [special]. We don't know what the sources will be in the future. We need the flexibility of TCP/IP."

Cardenas adds that an end-to-end IP solution eliminates the need for other traditional analog controllers in multiroom applications. "Ordinarily you need a switcher and a system to control the switcher," he says. "With IP, you can have a Web server with a built-in interface."

In the extreme, traditional analog systems are like the old mechanical lighting control systems with the low-voltage switches, says Polk. "You need to add something to it to make any changes."

In the case of IP systems, changes can be made in the software.

Cardenas says that NetStreams will roll out a new feature soon called Playmates that will allow users to marry certain IP speakers to each other or with subwoofers. "They can be controlled as one, without a hardware change," he says. "Try doing that with a matrix switch."