Few Options Existed for ‘Accessing’ Digital Music Until Sonos Came Along, Patent Says
With the “ever growing interest in digital media,” there continues to be a market “need to develop consumer-accessible technologies to further enhance the listening experience,” says a U.S. patent (9,930,463) that Sonos landed Tuesday. It describes methods of “defect detection via audio playback” in a multiroom home entertainment network.
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The options for “accessing and listening to digital audio in an out-loud setting were limited” until Sonos “began offering a media playback system for sale,” the patent says. It was based on a March 2016 application and names as its only inventor Richard Little, of Santa Barbara, California, whose LinkedIn profile identifies him as vice president-engineering at Goertek Electronics USA and a former Sonos consultant.
The Sonos Wireless HiFi System introduced for sale in 2005 “enables people to experience music from many sources via one or more networked playback devices,” the patent says. Through a “software control” app installed on a smartphone or tablet, “one can play what he or she wants in any room that has a networked playback device,” it says. “Additionally, using the controller, for example, different songs can be streamed to each room with a playback device, rooms can be grouped together for synchronous playback, or the same song can be heard in all rooms synchronously.”
Some “embodiments” of Little’s invention “involve detecting for playback device defects and/or abnormal behavior” in a network that may be impeding the system’s audio performance, the patent says. The defects “may be detected by having the playback device play a test sound” for recording or monitoring, so the “audio settings of the playback device may be adjusted based on the usage activity,” it says.
The playback device may include one or more processors, transducers or microphones and memory with stored “instructions executable” to direct the playback device to perform the test functions by recording a sample of music from a device suspected of being defective and compared it with a reference sample, the patent says. Sonos representatives didn't comment.