Can you imagine being able to place your existing wired speakers anywhere you have a power outlet, instead of running speaker cable through walls, or under carpets? That will be made possible with Audio Cu, a technology developed by Scottsdale, Arizona-based Fasetto.
Audio Cu will be using the existing power lines to transmit up to 10 channels of lossless, hi-res audio at up to 24-bit/192 kHz from a single transmitter to multiple receivers. Fasetto recently received Dolby Atmos certification for Audio Cu from Dolby Labs and the company claims it is the first audio-over-power-line manufacturer to do so.
Incidentally, "Cu" is the periodic table symbol for the element copper, which is often used in both speaker and power cables because of its excellent conductivity.
Using power lines to transmit data isn’t new. Several networking companies like TP-Link make power line networking products that act as alternatives to Ethernet and Wi-Fi. However, solutions focused exclusively on multichannel, multiroom audio have yet to become mainstream. This is likely because of the inherent difficulty of creating fast and robust connections over wiring that was never meant to perform this role.
Latency or packet loss from the transmitter to the receivers, which can be overcome when dealing with other forms of data, create unacceptable audio quality in home theaters.
Fasetto says it’s the only company that has overcome these obstacles and can move data "cleanly over power lines in all environments." If this is accurate, it’s an impressive accomplishment.
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