Summit Wireless Technology Affordable Wireless Solution Could Revolutionize the Industry

Summit Semiconductor announced a low cost speaker module design and companion amplifier targeting entry level home theater systems with its Summit Wireless technology. Summit Wireless technology is an award-winning integrated circuit solution for home theater products including speakers, Blu-ray players, digital TVs, sound bars, audio/video receivers and gaming consoles that offers superior interference-free wireless surround sound with ease of setup and automatic audio calibration anywhere within a room. The new speaker module design is said to represent a 53% reduction in size over the current implementation, while still retaining the robust high definition link performance with built-in four antenna diversity allowing placement of a speaker anywhere in a room without signal loss or interruption.

To further reduce system cost, Summit designed a companion amplifier/power supply reference design based on Texas Instrument’s popular TAS5727 digital amplifier. The new amplifier attaches directly to the speaker module resulting in a compact design that reduces the number of components and engineering time for the development of a powered speaker.  The new module and amplifier design addresses speaker and consumer electronics companies’ desire to incorporate the technology across their product portfolio including entry level products such as sound bars and small speakers.

"Summit Wireless technology is the only wireless audio solution on the market that can deliver the breath of performance at the high end of the home theater market with uncompressed 24-bit audio up to 8 channels, while also scaling nicely to entry level system price points for consumers who are more cost conscious but still appreciate the hi-definition audio and ease of set up value proposition," said Tony Parker, vice president of marketing, Summit Semiconductor. “With the introduction of our new lower cost speaker module and companion amplifier reference design speaker companies will be able to introduce Summit Wireless solutions to the mass market faster than ever.”

Summit Wireless' SpeakerFinder technology eliminates setup complexity with automatic speaker location discovery and channel assignment (left, right, surround, …) on power up.  Home theater calibration for a specific sweet spot location is a complex, time consuming process, but Summit's MyZone technology enables the consumer to program the sweet spot to a specific location with the press of a single button.

Technology Overview

• High Quality Audio - Uncompressed, no compromise 24-bit 48/96Ksps surround sound audio
•  Scalable from Stereo to 7.1 Surround Sound - Add Summit enabled speakers and components at any time
• Easy Setup - No wires, no technicians
• SpeakerFinder - Automatic mapping of each speaker
• MyZone - Instant sweet spot calibration time aligned to the listener's position
• Robust Wireless Network - Robust interference resistant wireless network between the master and up to eight speakers, with low fixed latency of 5ms

The Next Steps Could Change the Industry

We learned something quite interesting today at the Summit Wireless booth at CEDIA.  The USB output found on many HDTV displays has the ability to support high resolution multi-channel audio if the feature is enabled by the display manufacturer.  If the end user plugs all of their HDMI sources into their display, they could transmit the multi-channel audio from each source component out to an attached Summit Wireless dongle that could decode the multi-channel audio and send it to a full 5.1 wireless speaker system enabled with Summit Wireless technology.  This would completely eliminate the need for an A/V receiver and provide a convenient, easy to use solution for consumers not able to route speaker cables around the room to achieve a truly high performance multi-channel experience.  We are big fans of Summit’s technology as we’ve demoed first hand at the last two CEDIA/CES shows.  The implications of making this tech more compact and affordable with the ability to use the HDTV display as the demarcation point for all your sources makes it a unique and very practical solution that we hope the industry will adopt going forward.  Only time will tell….

For more information please visit Summit Semiconductor

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