Asono, a manufacturer of digital audio equipment, has selected the Nordic Semiconductor's nRF24Z1 transceiver to power the wireless link between its aesthetically-designed DAB1 'kitchen shelf' radio and remote stereo speaker. The Nordic nRF24Z1 transceiver boasts ample bandwidth (up to 4 Mbps) to deliver uncompressed 16-bit resolution, 44,1 kHz, CD-quality audio per channel between the Asono DAB1 radio and its optional wireless satellite stereo speaker up to 10 m away.
According to the company, competing solutions such as Bluetooth lack the bandwidth to deliver high-quality audio and must resort to compression techniques, compromising sound quality.
The Asono DAB1 radio has already received some rave reviews in the specialist hi-fi press for its appearance, novel features and high-quality audio reproduction.
Comments Lars Elstad, marketing manager at Asono: "In addition to including leading design features - such as a digital display that can be re-orientated when a user turns the main unit on its side, and the ability to pause, rewind and record DAB radio broadcasts - it had to sound great."
"Because we specified high quality speakers from Norwegian manufacturer SEAS, differences in audio quality were easily detectable due to faithful reproduction of the source audio signal," says Mads Hoyby, Asono product developer. "In addition, although the satellite speaker is mains-powered, the main unit can be battery powered, so low power consumption is essential. We initially tried a Bluetooth-based solution for the wireless link, but found that the power consumption was too high, draining the main unit's batteries. The wireless audio link was also more prone to ambient 2,4 GHz interference than Nordic's transceiver."
Notes SEAS director Jorgen Gjerdrum: 'Our engineers were surprised at just how good the Nordic Semiconductor nRF24Z1 transceiver sounded when streaming wireless audio to our speakers in the Asono DAB radio. To our ears it lost practically nothing in terms of outright sound quality compared to a conventional hard-wired connection. We did not think that was yet possible with any wireless audio streaming transceiver, let alone a low cost, volume part like the nRF24Z1."
Digital audio broadcasting (DAB) is expected to eventually supersede analog FM and AM radio broadcasts across the world for clear interference-free sound. The UK, Germany, Norway, Denmark and Canada are currently the most advanced countries for DAB introduction.
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