ClearOne IP Speaker - Manual (Page 5)

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StreamNet
™
Connected IP Speakers W H I T E P A P E R
While many digital systems tout the Ethernet (IEEE 802.3x) standard and imply full
Internet connectivity, the implementation reality is very different. While the Ethernet
standard is part of the implementation of Internet or IP connectivity it is only a portion of
what is necessary and while a number of digital standards can co-exist on the same
CAT-5 cable as Internet traffic the performance of the IP part of the network is severely
degraded. Furthermore a specialized device is necessary to consume both the IP traffic
and the digital audio transmission and interpret them together, raising the cost of the
digital audio systems. For example, a CobraNet connected speaker would have a hard
time consuming streaming content from the Internet and rendering it in 5 different zones
while the content was streaming.
Processing intelligence for DRM and audio codecs is simply not built into the digital
audio distribution technologies, most of this would have to be added separately and
therefore cannot be relied upon as a platform on which to build new audio applications.
Finally sound customization is not an inherent element in digital audio, for the most part
room optimization is still a manual process as is the configuration of things like paging
zones. While the Ethernet addressability of some digital systems makes configuration
possible it doesn’t make it easy – configuration still requires individuals with specialized
knowledge and industry trained professionals who understand networking are still
required to learn one off protocols and tools for each digital distribution technology.
StreamNet Connected IP Speakers – A solution from the ground up
StreamNet was conceived with the notion that the Internet and a myriad of audio
sources would make up the distribution system of the future. In fact, the StreamNet
context is that sources may or may not exist within the same premises as the speakers.
Instead, sources can come and go from a premise, they can be only online, or they can
live in the premise scattered around a physical location.
The underlying technology of StreamNet is a fully network connected device, in fact,
StreamNet devices look like any other network connected device on a network, you can
look for their IP address, you can browse to them, you can even interrogate them like a
network device to determine their status. On top of this strong base that is provided by
the IP network StreamNet adds a number of important benefits.
StreamNet distributes uncompressed or compressed audio, synchronized across
multiple zones without any centralized control point or matrix switch. Additionally,
StreamNet devices are self-configuring on the network and they assign their own IP
addresses, advertise their capabilities to other devices on the network and discover the
capabilities of any other device on the network. The control in the StreamNet system is
completely decentralized. The removal of any one device, source, speaker, touch