Nepsu Triangle, a versatile wireless speaker

[fredboivin]

Hi everybody,

Here is a project I helped bring together by participating in the electronics design. This is the Triangle, a versatile hi-fi wireless speaker made by a small start-up in Montréal, Canada.
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/nepsu-triangle-the-most-versatile-hi-fi-speaker#/

It's designed around sound quality and no corners were cut there. Many features make it a compelling choice over, say, a Sonos speaker:
- It can connect via bluetooth, Wi-Fi (airplay, internet radios, computer, etc) and also AUX in.
- It has multiroom support over regular wireless network.
- It has a built-in microphone so you can use it to receive hands-free calls.

One other particulat thing is its design. It comes with a bracket that make is easy to mount it in a corner. And it has interchangeable face plates to fit your tastes.



If you're interested, please check it out! We've put a great deal of effort into this and it would be very appreciated.

Thanks!

[amspire]

Had a quick look, but this is an electronics forum - some proper technical specs would be good. The design looks good, but warm and comforting words will not work very well here.

What is the true RMS power of the amplifier?
Do you have any plots of the frequency response? We know the curve will vary with positions in the room and we know what speaker response curves look like.
Have you distortion figures at different frequencies?
What is the low frequency roll-off?
Is that a Start/Stop button on the front or a power button, or both?
Are international power cords available - at least for Australia?

Anyway, good luck. It is nice seeing a real project on Indiegogo.

Richard

[fredboivin]

I understand completely. I've asked them for the data and post them back as soon as I get it.

[edavid]

If you worked on the electronics design, why don't you already know these things 

(Pet peeve:  People who post about their projects, but leave out the price, as if it were a secret.  In this case, it starts at $230.)

[fredboivin]

It's not my project, I've merely helped with some aspects of the design and the layout.

- The power is 20W into each driver (bi-amped tweeter and midrange with active crossover).
- The button is for configuration and pairing with the phone app
- Input is DC (barrel 2.5mm ID, 5.5mm OD, center positive negative), so any quality 12V plug pack with the right plugs will do.

This is indeed a real project, they have working prototypes that you can test run for yourself at their office.

I'll try to get more juicy graphs and specs and post them back here.

edit: Power is 20W total
edit2: Barrel is center positive

[edavid]

- The power is 20W into each driver (bi-amped tweeter and midrange with active crossover).
- Input is DC (barrel 2.5mm ID, 5.5mm OD, center negative), so any quality 12V plug pack with the right plugs will do.

Can you really put 4A through a barrel plug?

[fredboivin]

The barrel jack is rated 5A, 50mR.

The amps are class-D and will not consume more than 2A, the rest is only low-power digital stuff. I corrected my last post: output is 20W total. But because of the bi-amping, it sounds much louder (about 1dB more).

[stmdude]

- Input is DC (barrel 2.5mm ID, 5.5mm OD, center negative), so any quality 12V plug pack with the right plugs will do.

center negative

center negative

WHY!?

Also, the word "sound quality" and these standards "bluetooth, Wi-Fi (airplay, internet radios, computer, etc)"  doesn't go together.

[fredboivin]

Quote from: fredboivin on Today at 02:33:54 AM
center negative

WHY!?

Typo, it is in fact center positive (a previous prototype had the center negative by error).

the word "sound quality" and these standards "bluetooth, Wi-Fi (airplay, internet radios, computer, etc)"  doesn't go together.

I really believe that the frowning upon digital sources is obsolete these days. Unless you're playing from a vinyl record, there is almost always digital involved today and I don't think the quality went down.

Bluetooth now has the aptX codec, which delivers almost cd-like quality.
Airplay uses Apple Lossless, which supports up to 32bit/384kHz. The internet radios do encode their stream, but if you are a purist, you can always use local bit-perfect FLAC files over DLNA.

There is always the occassionnal hiccups of wireless, but this is getting better. If you really don't want to use wireless, there is always an AUX in (3.5mm jack) that bypasses the internal DAC.

Don't get me wrong, this is not meant to replace a $10k+ studio set, but to provide the convenience of streaming wirelessly music in multiple rooms of your house without the need of an expensive bridge of having your phone always on.

[stmdude]

Quote from: fredboivin on Today at 02:33:54 AM
center negative

WHY!?

Typo, it is in fact center positive (a previous prototype had the center negative by error).

Ok, cool.

the word "sound quality" and these standards "bluetooth, Wi-Fi (airplay, internet radios, computer, etc)"  doesn't go together.

I really believe that the frowning upon digital sources is obsolete these days. Unless you're playing from a vinyl record, there is almost always digital involved today and I don't think the quality went down.

Oh, no, I have no problems at all with digital.  I have a problem with compression..
Classic filter-chain when playing back a local AAC file over BT from a phone:
AAC -> PCM -> SBC   ( Music now leaves phone)
SBC -> PCM -> Speaker
Meaning, my compressed audio is recompressed (using a much suckier codec) just because it's BT.

Same thing happens with AptX (which is all marketing BS anyways, but that's a different discussion).

Internet radio is slightly better (if it's implemented correctly). Too bad a majority of the stations are <=128Kbps MPEG1-Layer3

ALAC over AirPlay is (so far) the only decent way to stream audio imho. Unfortunately, Apple has "differing opinions" than me on what I'm allowed to do with my things than I do, so I don't use their laptops,tablets or phones.
( Nope, I'm not a zealot. I just like to manage my own music library, and sync my devices in a way where I know what happened, for instance. )

DLNA was the bane of my existence for a couple of years. The spec is written by people who have never written specifications before (or implemented protocols), and the mess that it is, is only surpassed by the sheer number of different interpretations (sorry, implementations) out in the wild.
DLNA needs to go away and die a slow agonizing death. 

( Seriously, the only standard I've implemented that's worse than DLNA is MirrorLink. That's when I lost faith in humanity, engineers and standards )

 Edit: Thinking back on the post, I might have come off as a bit negative towards your product. That wasn't my intent. I'm sure it's comparable in quality and features to your competition.  I'm just a bit sensitive about when (marketing) people throw around the words "sound quality" casually.

[fredboivin]

Sorry I didn't reply sooner, it slipped out of my head.

The project was successfully funded today! Even if I dot get anything out of this (it was volunteer work to help friends), it's is a nice feeling to know that people are ready to trust the work you did enough to give money for it.

Anyway, here is some more technical figures, if you are still interested:

- frequency response: 60Hz to 20kHz +/- 3dB (60-3k on the 4" mid-range driver and 3k-20k on the 3/4" tweeter)

- A 12V 5000mAh battery pack is available (10h of playback, charge in 1.5h) for 40$
- The power cord is 1.5m, with an extension of 2.5m (included)
- The power input of the brick (included) is universal

[Delta]

Mono audio!  Yeah!  How very modern!

[fredboivin]

Stereo is possible by syncing two of them with the software. Multiroom is done the same way.

You need a pair, because it is really just one driver.

[DmitryL]

Stereo is possible by syncing two of them with the software. Multiroom is done the same way.

So, nice shiny pictures show that the contraption is paper-thin and at the same time has almost flat frequency response from 20Hz to 20KHz..
Thus, it doesn't need boring stuff like big padded inside boxes and phase inverter tubes ? Am I right ?

Btw, I'm not a specialist in audiometry, but something tells me that human hearing system is very sensitive to phase difference between right and left ears..
How do you provide a very consistent and stable phase difference between R & L channnels when you "syncing two of them with the software" ?
AFAIK "software"-induced  phase lags and jitter can ruin stereo picture..

On the other hand, stupid hipshers buy whatever looks shiny..

[xygor]

On the other hand, stupid hipshers buy whatever looks shiny..

When aliens invade and the only thing the deflects their death rays is something shiny, who's gonna look stupid then? Huh?

Edit: punctuation & spelling

[Delta]

Sorry Fred, I'm not having a go at you or your project - it will certainly do as claimed - emit some sound sent to it wirelessly.

I just hate all this recent crappy audio stuff.  A HiFi amp and pair of speakers costing the same as a bluetooth speaker will always sound far far better.  We have a whole generation of people who have no idea of what decent stereo audio sounds like.  It does my head in that people think it's acceptable to pay £££ to listen to tinny music in mono!

I get compliments when they come round to my house and hear a proper system (non of my systems cost more than £100), all of which consist of an old amp from a decent manufacture (Technics, Marantz etc) and a decent old set of speakers (Pioneer, Sony, etc).  Certainly nothing "audiophile" or even bought new of expensive, but they sound great!  And two speakers spaced apart!  Wow!  "It sounds like the music as all around us!"

I fear for the future...  But hey, each to their own!  Best of luck with your sales mate. 

[edavid]

This graph shows everything that's wrong with crowdfunding.  The meaningful data is squished into a tiny part of the scale, with the purpose of making the product look better than it is, to the ignorant.