Smart Sound: The Future of Music Technology
Learn about the slickest new digital sound systems
April 7, 2003
Digital Sound Projector
This month, Pioneer is rolling out PDSP-1, its first-generation sound projector, for a retail price of $40,000. OK, so it's not necessarily a bargain, but it just might represent the future of audio systems. A rectangle covered with 254 tiny speakers, it can sit anywhere in the room and throw sound into every nook and cranny, and even bounce sound off of walls and ceiling, in order to simulate the placement of a five-speaker surround system (center plus right and left for the front and rear). The subwoofer is sold separately.
While it may not be ideal for a loud rumbling home theater system — it'll be a long time before the sound projector sounds better than $40,000 speakers — it's useful for cramped spaces, or places where it would be hard to hide wires. With a thickness of just five inches, it goes well beneath a plasma TV screen. It's the only such device on the radar, but if Pioneer proves its usefulness and lowers its price, this might become the next category in audio hardware.
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