21–30 of 49 posts
Fun fact: the author of this piece, Ben Hobby, is the son of David Hobby, the photographer who maintains Strobing, one of the best blogs on off camera lighting: https://strobist.blogspot.com/?m=1
Really thought this post was going to somehow circle around to Hobby Lobby as I was reading it.
It looks so much of an overkill on the digital side. A fully fledged SoC with PCI Express and standalone WiFi NIC just to do network, and audio decode? Chinese factories make such Internet radios on $2 Espressif or Realtek microcontrollers.
It looks like the processor is doing some form of DSP, so some smarts are required. It can also play from Spotify etc. and the binaries for that are probably bloated like most cloud services. With this said, had this been a lower end product, the SoC would probably have been an Allwinner or MTK with a soldered Realtek SDIO WiFi solution.
And the fact that the module is 3rd labeled, suggests that either Broadcom or Realtek is involved
IKEA seem to be killing it in speaker area these days. Even as Swede, that's kind of unexpected. I guess they saw a market segment where a lot of wood is used (this one's plastic though), and there were high margins for the premium products and then decided to go for it. There's obviously a great deal of outsourcing to chinese and taiwanese manufacturers going on here, but they seem to be very competent in the custom…
It looks so much of an overkill on the digital side. A fully fledged SoC with PCI Express and standalone WiFi NIC just to do network, and audio decode? Chinese factories make such Internet radios on $2 Espressif or Realtek microcontrollers.
It looks like the processor is doing some form of DSP, so some smarts are required. It can also play from Spotify etc. and the binaries for that are probably bloated like most cloud services. With this said, had this been a lower end product, the SoC would probably have been an Allwinner or MTK with a soldered Realtek SDIO WiFi solution.
One of my favourite things about my Sonos setup is that it avoids me having to run bloated cloud service binaries on my personal computing devices. (Most notably, of the services I use, SiriusXM digital services have always been most unpleasant to use.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It looks like the processor is doing some form of DSP, so some smarts are required. It can also play from Spotify etc. and the binaries for that are probably bloated like most cloud services. With this said, had this been a lower end product, the SoC would probably have been an Allwinner or MTK with a soldered Realtek SDIO WiFi solution.
> It can also play from Spotify etc. and the binaries for that are probably bloated like most cloud services. One of my favourite things about my Sonos setup is that it avoids me having to run bloated cloud service binaries on my personal computing devices. (Most notably, of the services I use, SiriusXM digital services have always been most unpleasant to use.)
Anyone knows how much power that amp can source? Impossible to find any numbers.
He just pluged in the speaker cables into a different speaker. Started with a speaker and amp all in one box, and a speaker needing an amp. Ended up with a speaker and separate amp in bits on the table, and, if he screws the sonos box back together, a speaker that now needs an amp.
He is now wondering about building a box for this amp. ;)
I would recomend he put the bits back in the box they came in!
Pretty pointless. I've dont the opposite "hack" of mounting amps inside passive speakers, saves on untidy cables.
If you want an external amp for your speaker. Well, go buy one: when you buy it, they will tell you the numbers :)
Quite dangerous to leave this without an enclosure, since the power supply is on the same PCB, several of the components and solder points carry mains voltage. I'm surprised an outlet as high profile as Make don't at least recommend one, or have any of the usual warnings about high voltage. On a side note, it's no mean feat integrating large through hole components and tiny SMD parts onto the one PCB, normally power…
From TFA: "... maybe build yourself a nice enclosure for the electronics ..."
That doesn't detract from the article's interestingness by any means, but pointing out at least some of the risks is the sort of thing that should happen more often in them. The off-hand way in which the enclosure was mentioned detracts a bit, in my mind, from an otherwise interesting article. Maybe I'm overthinking things a bit.
Anyone knows how much power that amp can source? Impossible to find any numbers.
He turned a speaker amplifier into a speaker amplifier. He just pluged in the speaker cables into a different speaker. Started with a speaker and amp all in one box, and a speaker needing an amp. Ended up with a speaker and separate amp in bits on the table, and, if he screws the sonos box back together, a speaker that now needs an amp. He is now wondering about building a box for this amp. ;) I would recomend he put…
Sonos Amp costs $599, so this is an interesting alternative.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It can also play from Spotify etc. and the binaries for that are probably bloated like most cloud services. One of my favourite things about my Sonos setup is that it avoids me having to run bloated cloud service binaries on my personal computing devices. (Most notably, of the services I use, SiriusXM digital services have always been most unpleasant to use.)
That's what made me ditch sonos 4 years ago. Being forced to run everything through the awful Sonos app instead of casting from the dedicated app or playing through Bluetooth without any delays.