ClearOne IP Speaker User Manual

StreamNet™Connected IP Speakers

The Evolving Market:

The talk of AV & IT convergence has gone on for years now, mostly being pushed by
one side or the other, but for the first time ever the trend is now being pushed by the
needs of the market. Over the past five years, the distribution of music online has gone
from an interesting experiment to the fastest growing content distribution channel. The
transformation from the original analog recordings on vinyl, to the digital format on CD,
and now to the bits and bytes over a wire has taken many decades. Each step along the
way has been accompanied by the naysayer’s and skeptics, but for each step we’ve
won over all but the smallest fraction of hold outs. The reason of course is that each
transition opened up new opportunities for portability, quality, and ease of use.
However, until now, the custom audio distribution solutions within the premises have
been relatively unaffected, and while many of the requirements such a quality,
simplicity, and reliability continue on, new requirements have emerged that require
dealers and integrators to rethink the solutions they offer their customers. New
requirements for audio distribution systems are:

• Scale & Extensibility

• Environmental Impact

• Internet connectivity

• Processing intelligence for DRM and CODEC upgradeability

• Sound customization to the environment

Scale & Extensibility

Today’s buildings, whether they are homes or commercial properties, are getting bigger
and bigger. They are also demanding high quality audio throughout the premises. While
the 12 and 16 channel centralized audio distribution systems were an effective solution
in the past, the lack of scalability for the future raises concerns. Additionally, today’s
sources are no longer fixed – audio subscriptions come and go, iPods, PCs and other
Personal Media Players (PMP) move in and out of environments. The centralized view
of audio sources has exploded into a web of sources that are transient. Where to plug
each of these into? Where to configure them as they come and go? The predictable
12x12 matrix switch doesn’t have a clean answer to these demands.

Environmental Impact

There is a growing environmental awareness both within businesses and households.
New large scale investments are being evaluated for their environmental impact and
consumers want to know that their lifestyle choices are leaving the world a better place
for their children and grandchildren. Many manufacturers have rushed to stick a green
label on existing products without changing the product – this would seem at first glance
to be a good thing. However, ask yourself this question, “If all manufacturers say their
products are Green and our environment is suffering, how can the manufacturer’s
statements all be true?” The logical answer is they can’t. Consumers and business

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owners will look to their trusted advisors – their integrators – to separate fact from
fiction.

In the custom audio market the big environmental offender is energy consumption and
the use of copper. For every pound of copper that we take out the ground and process,
we release four pounds of carbon dioxide, a green house gas. In a 100lbs amplifier and
matrix switch unit there is on the order of 50lbs of copper. The copper in this system
alone results in about 50 (multiply by 4, the number of pounds of carbon dioxide per
pound of copper) = 200 pounds of carbon dioxide or about 0.1 tons!

StreamNet™Connected IP Speakers

Internet Connectivity

There are many reasons for connectivity but the biggest drivers are access to audio
content and monitoring and upgrades of systems. Today’s answer to the first
requirement is to download content to a hard disc, convert it to analog and distribute it
around the business or home. This is fine in a world of fixed online services with a
single download to disk business model. Unfortunately this is not the world we live in;
we have content that is streamed from a subscription service, downloaded to iPods and
mobile phones as well as audio codecs that media servers don’t support out of the box.
The real answer must be a true connectivity and distribution option for the digital audio
files and streams of all kinds. The second part of Internet connectivity is a more
common use, remote access to systems allowing dealers to design services to ensure
that the systems are delivering the optimal experience for the customer. While many
analog systems can tell if the matrix switch and amp are running, telling whether a
speaker is working is a lot harder, and telling whether it’s producing great sound is not
even in the realm of possibility for analog systems. From the simple to the advanced,
the delivery of diagnostic services builds on the foundation provided by Internet
connectivity.

Processing Intelligence for DRM and upgradeability

One reality of online content is the unfortunate presence of DRM, of course it’s
unfortunate only in that there isn’t one kind of DRM but the myriad of different open and
proprietary schemes that make a consumers life a nightmare. The ability to
authenticate the user in their environment is something that any audio distribution
system will have to do in the future. In addition, since the particular flavor of DRM is
unknown ahead of time, the audio distribution system must be capable of adapting itself
to the DRM in use by the customers’ favorite online music service.

Sound Customization to the Environment:

Every customer wishes that the sound that came from their speakers could be tailored
to their environment. Whether the environment is a hospital that had specific paging
groups that could be created on the fly or whether the environment was an exquisite

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home theater with no expense spared. Unfortunately, the reality of centralized audio
distribution and this desire for having sound reproduced just for me don’t mesh. In
commercial environments one set of solutions is used, in home theater another set of
solutions is used, all to bring a unique and personal touch to the way audio is
reproduced. These different systems drive cost up and don’t typically play well with the
audio distribution system itself, leading to a hacked together system that ‘sort of’ works.

With all these new requirements on audio distribution, manufacturers of electronics and
speakers have been clamoring to find the perfect solution. The result is a wealth of
choice for the consumer and installer. In this next section we’ll compare the options
available today and discuss why StreamNet Connected IP speakers address all the
challenges and needs of the market.

StreamNet™Connected IP Speakers

Solving the audio distribution challenge

Like the evolution from analog to digital to IP delivered content, the audio distribution
architecture for consuming the content has evolved from analog, to digital, and now to
complete IP-Based. In looking at the next generation of requirements you will see that
only the StreamNet Connected IP-Based architecture creates a platform for meeting the
needs of the market.

Analog Distribution systems with passive speakers

Analog systems have proven themselves over the years and work in today’s low-cost
environments where the audio system is being used for low level background music, but
as we look to the future the analog system fails to meet all the new requirements for
audio distribution in any meaningful way.

From a scalability and extensibility perspective the analog system is confined by the
matrix switch, and while some matrix switches offer the ability to cascade, they
generally reach their limits with 32 or 64 channels. Additionally the cost to build out a
system with an odd number of channels or zones is excessive; consider the 9th zone on
an 8 zone system.

Environmental impact was covered earlier in some detail, but it’s worth restating. The
copper in the matrix switch and amplifier combined with the copper wire to transmit the
data has a large carbon dioxide footprint. As mentioned earlier for a 6 zone system the
carbon footprint is almost ¼ of a ton! This doesn’t even include the actual energy
consumed during the 1

Internet connectivity is only now being added to analog systems; however the
connectivity is only for meta data typically. In the case where IP connectivity is added to
downstream components like speakers, this is typically for control. However, going

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year of operation.

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