British technology development firm 1 Ltd has teamed up with Pioneer Electronics in the US to produce a digital sound projector, writes Barbara Marshall
British technology development firm 1 Ltd has teamed up with Pioneer Electronics in the US to produce a digital sound projector, writes Barbara Marshall.

The PDSP-1 is capable of delivering discrete 5.1 channel surround sound from a single-source speaker panel in contrast to the five or more conventional speakers that are usually required. It works by controlling separate beams of sound, emitted from 254 small speakers in the panel, which are bounced off a room's walls and ceiling to replace the left, right and rear speakers.

?The sound quality of the digital sound projectors is stunning,' said Pioneer home entertainment division vice-president of marketing Craig McManis. 'It will revolutionise the speaker industry not only because of its sound quality but by eliminating the need to set up and wire multiple speakers.'

The system will be available in the US early next year.

1 Ltd is based in Cambridge, UK and Tokyo. It has developed a number of pioneering technologies including proprietary digital signal processing which forms the basis of the digital sound projector.

Eclipse TD, the UK arm of Japanese in-car communications specialist Fujitsu Ten, has launched a desktop version of its unique egg-shaped speaker monitor. Both the TD 508PA and the larger TD 512 version are based on the firm's Time Domain technology which, it claims, eliminates sound distortion because of the unique shape and construction of the speaker ( Broadcast, 18.1.02).

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