EDMONTON, Alberta, Canada, April 4, 2018 – It would be a sin to continue to utilize traditional WiFi when there is a better option available. It really is that simple.
Eleven Engineering, Inc. (www.elevenengineering.com), a market leader in semiconductor products for wireless audio for home theater, multi-room, portable, professional, 12 Volt (car, truck, motorcycle, power sports, marine) and gaming applications, has broken down WiFi’s Seven Deadly Sins…and why SKAA® is superior in so many ways…on its YouTube channel.
“When you peel back the layers, traditional Wifi is subpar, or even non-existent, in seven key areas of modern wireless HiFi audio categories,” explained Rex Whitehead, Eleven Engineering Executive Vice President – Sales & Marketing. “We break it down on our YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tw2iSCuT0x8) because WiFi is more of a detriment rather than a benefit to those who value superior wireless audio in their everyday lives, as well as wireless audio product manufacturers who cater to and depend upon these customers.”
WiFi Audio’s Seven Deadly Sins:
1- Fragmented
· There are many flavors of WiFi audio, and they’re completely INCOMPATIBLE with each other
2- Big, variable latency
· Virtually all Wifi audio solutions introduce large latencies (250 ms – 2000 ms)
· Many Wifi solutions introduce latencies which vary from speaker to speaker (lack of sync means poor imaging) and vary from session to session (like rolling the dice when you power them up)
3- Lack of ease
· Complex and time consuming to set up
4- No headphones
· WiFi is optimized for static (non-mobile) devices
· WiFi is a power hog; this does not bode well for headphone implementations
5- Hotspot requirement
· Almost all WiFi audio solutions require the source and speaker to be on the same WiFi network; and you may not have the password, either.
6- A small piece of the pie
· WiFi is limited to background streaming music; WiFi will fail at virtually every other category that combines a visual aspect (i.e. gaming, Netflix/YouTube/GarageBand, Social Media video streaming, etc.) with the audio aspect.
7- Congestion
· Putting WiFi speakers on your network serves to clog up your network, slowing your Internet access and causing WiFi to fail at what it’s actually good at…data transport from your smart device to the cloud.
SKAA is the new wireless HiFi audio standard developed by Eleven Engineering, Inc. SKAA transmitters work with iOS & Android mobile devices, Mac & Windows computers, televisions, and just about any product with a line output or a headphone jack. SKAA is also available as a built-in technology not requiring an external transmitter in purpose-designed partner products, which are featured at SKAA.com. In environments laden with heavy Wi-Fi and Bluetooth traffic, SKAA navigates through these hostile environments with best-in-class reliability. SKAA also allows for uninterrupted audio signals that are delivered with the highest sound quality to all speakers without the latency that is inherent in other wireless solutions.
According to Eleven Engineering, North American standards dictate that “audio shall not lag video by more than 60 ms”. Ethernet protocol is a very polite protocol which always “looks before it sends” and if the channel is busy with other traffic when a particular node wants to send, the Ethernet protocol waits for a period and tries again. If the channel is still busy, Ethernet protocol dictates a longer wait time till the next send is attempted, and so on.
“The above ‘polite’ protocol at the base of Ethernet works great for data packets, but is fundamentally flawed for transporting a low-latency real-time audio stream,” Whitehead continued. “The base protocol Wifi uses is Ethernet protocol. SKAA delivers 36 ms latency. Always. One of the main reasons SKAA is so flexible is that it’s 100 percent WiFi free. While fantastic for connecting your device to the Internet, WiFi is an awkward, cumbersome albatross in audio land.”
Whitehead concluded, “SKAA is superior to WiFi in all of these aforementioned categories. It is highly flexible as it is also compatible with any brand, any product, anytime, anywhere, with rock solid reliability, great range, and CD-quality sound. SKAA is ridiculously easy to use…all compatible products are ready to play right out of the box with no pairing required. Continuing to utilize WiFi has become a trend that’s no longer necessary. Moving from WiFi to SKAA is an apples to apples comparison to moving from a mobile phone to a smart phone…SKAA offers that much more flexibility and expanded use cases.”
For more on SKAA and the Seven Deadly Sins of WiFi Audio, please subscribe to https://www.youtube.com/user/SKAAwireless and visit SKAA.com.
For more information, contact Rex Whitehead at 480-650-3979 or email whitehead@eleveneng.com. For more information on Eleven Engineering, visit www.elevenengineering.com.
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada-based Eleven Engineering, Inc. is a market leader in microprocessors SiPs (System in Package) and modules designed for wireless audio for Home Theater, Multi-Room, Portable, and Pro Audio products. Eleven’s XInC2 multithreaded processor was designed specifically for digital wireless audio applications but is also well suited for other realtime intensive microprocessor applications.
Eleven’s high-performance wireless audio semiconductors, equipped with XInC2 wireless processor cores, are complete solutions for high-quality digital wireless audio transport. WFD™, Eleven’s proprietary wireless audio transport protocol, has a narrow footprint in the radio spectrum, delivering both best-in-class coexistence with WiFi / Bluetooth and unparalleled Quality of Service.
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