Avantgarde Acoustic unveiled their new Zero 1 fully active speaker with digital inputs.
The speaker is the system! Just add a source.
The source can be an Apple Airport Express which a user can just send their music to from an iPad, iPhone or Samsung Galaxy.
Of course, you could also connect a standard CD transport via s/pdif, AES/EBU or a Mac/PC vis USB. There is also going to be an optional ADC board for analogue sources.
Despite the relatively small size and plug and play focus, if you closed your eyes in the room, you could almost be fooled into thinking the big Trio/Basshorn system was playing.
This is definitely an Avantgarde product and has their typical transparent and very “live” sound.
The Zero 1 has 3 dacs in each speaker (one for each driver). It accepts digital inputs; USB, OPT Toslink, S/PDIF, AES/EBU into the master speaker.
Digital processing is using a 66 Bit FPGA for all 6 channels. The digital x-over uses a progressive FIR filter which avoids ringing by virtue of the design of the rolloff curves. Phase correction is also performed to time align the 3 drivers (The midrange driver is actually set back quite a bit within the enclosure to achieve the horn loading).
D to A conversion is carried out by the 24 bit Burr/Brown DACS.
Maximum sample rate accepted is the CD standard 16 bit/44.1 khz.
The signal is transmitted from the master to slave speaker using 2.4 Ghz ISM/SRD transmission.
Some of the details may change when they reach final production by September.