On Monday January 9th, Press Day a t CES 2012, I met the fine folks with Summit Wireless, a company that makes the technology that drives some, and hopefully soon, a lot of the home theater gear that you hear.  Tony and Lincoln from Summit gave me a demonstration of their unique technology that was a real eye opener, or ear opener actually, as to how Home Theater Surround Sound systems should sound and act; giving me reason to want to wait just a bit longer before buying that sound system for my boy’s new game room.  While you won’t be buying directly from them, you will be buying their technology soon.

Summit Wireless has found that consumers wanted a low cost, high quality sound system that is easy to setup and use.  Now if you have ever tried to setup a home theater or home stereo system with more than two speakers you know it is not easy.  There is running the wires to the speakers, making sure they are on the correct side (I have been known to swap the Left & Right once in a while), ensuring that the sub woofer is well placed and then there are those pesky satellite speakers.  Getting everything set in the optimum location to get the sound to focus, or get the “sweet spot”, right where you will sit to listen to it.  Yeah, good luck doing that yourself Mr. Average Joe Consumer. You can find it in higher end equipment or you can pay someone to come to your home and optimize it for you.

Well that is where Summit Wireless comes into play.  They have new technology that was adapted from some of their current high end audio gear that finds the “sweet spot” no matter where your speakers are and no matter where you are going to listen to it within the room.  How may you ask? Well, with magic.  No, seriously.  They have a system that uses ultrasonic frequencies to have the system determine where each of its speaker are within the room to within 2″, analyzes the layout of each speaker relative to each other, figures the needed adjustments in timing for your speakers based on where you are listening to it, and makes those adjustments all in the blink of an eye.   All you need to do is either click a button on a remote or use a connected tablet or smart phone with their app and a special ultrasonic “puck” to initiate the “myzone” process depending on what type of system you are using.

Summit developed economic solutions that will allow major audio brands to offer Sound Bars and full Surround Sound setups for a very reasonable price point but sound and act like they cost a lot more.  Their solutions are also upgradeable or “scalable” so that you can add to them and increase their ability, and by using the WiSA standards, they are able to have different manufacturer speakers work together.  So if you like certain brand of speakers for your sub woofer and another for your satellite speakers, you can do that.  Mix and match, how cool is that?!  And the best thing is that they are wireless, except for AC power of course, so that you do not need to worry about running speaker wires in the attic or under the rug anymore and they run in the UNII band frequencies so that they will not encounter interference from all those other 2.4gHz band “wireless” devices in your home.

So here is the the simplified breakdown,

1.Interference free operation – UNII band (up to 24 channels)
2.High quality – 24bit uncompressed audio, 48/96KHz – Supports high bit rate content (i.e. Blu-ray)
3.Simple setup – Scalable from 1.0 to 7.4 Surround Sound
4.WiSA – Wireless Speaker Interoperability Association

Now what does this mean to you?  Lower cost, easy to setup, and easy to use.  Basically, it just works. Now that is Totally Cool Tech!

If you want to learn more, and I encourage you to check this out, go visit the Summit Wireless website.

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