IKEA's Sonos Speaker Has a Secret
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 มิ.ย. 2024
- When IKEA launched its own line of smart speakers in collaboration with Sonos, many wondered how they were able to sell them for such low cost. I tore one down and discovered the answer.
Sources and more information:
Main CPU: MCIMX6X2EVN10AC, www.nxp.com/part/MCIMX6X2EVN10AC
RAM: Nanya NT5CC128M16JR-EK, www.nanya.com/en/Product/4115...
Ethernet PHY: Maxim 78Q2133, www.maximintegrated.com/en/pr...
Audio DAC: TI PCM5101A, www.ti.com/product/PCM5101A
Flash memory: Winbond W29N02GVSIAA, www.winbond.com/resource-file...
Amp: TI TPA3116, www.ti.com/product/TPA3116D2
iFixit Play:1 teardown: www.ifixit.com/Device/Sonos_P...
Play:1 FCC filings: fccid.io/SBVRM009
Play:1's original PowerPC-based CPU: www.nxp.com/part/MPC8314VRADDA
Play:1 switched to ARM-based CPUs: / 2015_vs_2017_play_1
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Please consider supporting my work on Patreon: / thisdoesnotcompute
Follow me on Twitter and Instagram! @thisdoesnotcomp
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Music: "Heartache" by Dan Mason (danmason.bandcamp.com).
Additional music by Epidemic Sound (www.epidemicsound.com).
Intro music by BoxCat Games (www.box-cat.com). - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
An interesting note that I cut from the video for time, but still worth sharing: The Play:1 doesn't support AirPlay, but Symfonisk does. If they share the same internal components, why is this? It all comes down to that FCC filing for the Play:1 -- the PowerPC CPU originally used isn't powerful enough, but the ARM chip that Sonos switched to is dramatically faster. Sonos *could* technically offer a firmware update for newer Play:1 models to add AirPlay support, but likely won't as it would confuse owners of older, PPC-based Play:1s ("why does my speaker not get the update, but other people's do?"). I'd love to see someone with embedded systems experience figure out how to dump the contents of Syfonisk's boot media and write it to a Play:1, preferably over the network (partially because I really want AirPlay on the Play:1 I bought to tear down for this episode).
This Does Not Compute Poly Fill is used in an enclosure when the woofer is in an enclosure that isn't large enough.
The new Play One does support AirPlay
are you sure it's connected via pcie and not usb?
Great video 👍
T00LF00L the Play:1 (no airplay) and the Play One (airplay + alexa) are not the se product. It wasn't clear which This Does Not Compute has frrom the video, but the FCC filing he showed was for the Play:1
I work for an Ikea CDC and they gave all the employees a symfonisk speaker for Christmas. I love it.
Such a high quality video and teardown
for such low quality speakers
with such a clickbait title.
@@GlacialLake I agree, review was amazing, title not. There is nothing secretly bad about this as the title suggests.
@mob1235 I don't think they are that bad. Don't get me wrong, of course there exist better ones but the design seems to be of good (build) quality (Except those CapXon caps). The audio quality won't be the best, but decent enough for the average consumer.
The only thing I can't understand is why people in General want those mono "intelligent" speakers at home. Even a rather cheap stereo/5.1 system sounds a lot better if set up correctly in the room.
It's presented well but riddled with technical errors and incorrect assumptions. The conclusions are completely wrong. Enjoy the pictures, ignore the commentary.
Beware. Outside beautiful. Inside rotten
Channels like these are performing a real service.
Keeping the Big Co's transparent and the public informed one teardown at a time. ;)
Thank you for all your hard work!
real service? or just entertainment?
what items you have opened, all gear in house?
@@lucasrem
He wants him to cover vibrators next. 👍
"Keeping companies transparent" .. Wow... That's what you got from this you WOKE toolbag?
Another reason why soon almost everything will be glued shut and it will have the worst parts possible.
Ikea sales volumes and distribution is something sonos would have never achieved alone
Yeah. Also easily explains the price drop. When one is buying on the Ikea scale for their global store network, one gets to tend bulk discounts even Sonos sized company never could dream off.
Sonos was big in USA with retail deals.... Ikea is big Everywhere. It brings whole different scale. Plus Sonos previously mostly sold to audio interested people ordering online or specifically going to electronics/audio stores..... The Symphonisks..... next to the lamps in Ikea on the corridor everyone has to walk past to get to check out. Ikea masters of the "you are in our buying maze and don't walk out without something in shopping cart."
Plus well Ikea is privately owned and plays the long game. So they can run smaller but still decent margin, since there is no investors and shareholder to please with high margins to keep the stock price high. While paying royalties etc. to Sonos.... Who do have to keep the stock market happy and the speakers where their only business, so those must have pretty healthy margins.
The Kamprad family has been wealthy beyond their ability to spend all that money due to Ikea for decades.... So they have no need to start suddenly trying to make a quick big buck. As long as the Ikea corp stays healthily profitable overall, the Kamprad don't care. These private family companies operate in completely different mindset compared to public stock companies. Kamprads and Ikea, Meyers of Meyer Werft so on and so on. They play the long game. The now past Ingvar Kamprad was also known to live very frugally and be cost conscious. So not only they had money beyond to spend, they spend pretty much none of it. Don't know if the tune has changed since Ingvar passed. Probably not, if he raised his children to same frugality mentality.
@@aritakalo8011 and there is one other thing.. Symfonisk is cheap, but you will never see this thing in sale.. Ikea can push their price more aggressiv because they always know their profit
@@germedia4369 depends on your Ikea. Here there is an "As-is" section where they sell customer returns and I've seen these speakers like-new and heavily discounted.
@@mamba109 That has to do with warranty, IKEA cannot repackage and sell as new once opened. Most of them are only opened boxes and in brand new condition too!
One of the best tech strip downs that I have watched in a long time. You know your stuff, and you are excellent at bringing it down to the level of the average joe, who just wants to know whether it's the ticket or if it's a dud. Keep up the good work.
Not sure how I've never heard of this channel. This was a brilliant video - Definitely earned my subscription! :)
Wow! What a great review, the best I've ever seen, great depth and camera work, and proving every point. Brilliant. I doff my hat sir.
I’m really like the lamp/speaker idea, especially for people who don’t have lots of space for conventional speakers. Great video
I wish every product review was like this
Me too !!!
Wadding will generally reduce bass level but increase extension while smoothing midrange response. However, it's unlikely that the amount in the non-Sonos speaker was enough to affect sound, especially not for the target audience
Hard to not click with that title
Killer job dude. Well put together and attention to detail was great!
Kind of reminds me of Scotty Kilmer's click bait, DON'T..............then shows a picture of a new Toyota!
As always I really enjoy this teardowns, even if are products that I probably never going to buy it. The research on every chip, every component to really understand how everything works is very interesting and the production is very good, that's why I take a moment this time to leave a comment, thank you and keep with the good work.
Such a calming and pleasing to watch video.
Thanks!
Fantastic teardown video with detailed review of components, I think you have set benchmarks of how teardowns should be done!
Thanks a lot. This is a REALLY THOROUGH video!!! Lots of explanations, and my technical geekness is entirely satisfied.
This was an awesome review, I love details and tear downs, thanks
Always great interesting video's, I really enjoyed the turntable video you did.
Excellent teardown and analysis. You're a true credit to the TH-cam community.
This was a *fantastic* teardown. Excellent job from a new subscriber.
Very Well Done Tare Down Review! You know your stuff!
What strikes me the most, regardless of the discussion at hand, is how people now conceives mono sound as something absolutely normal.
Another reason to go with headphones over a speaker.
yes weird shit
@@jackwilson5542 that’s not a reason to go headphones over speakers. Its a reason to buy decent stereo speakers.
awesome ammount of detail in this video. nice to see it gets enough views to justify the work a bit. greets
Masterful video! The production value is amazing.
Great video, very informative and awesome production quality! Thanks for sharing
Excellent level of quick, informative detail to your tear-downs. I’ve always passed up your videos because most of them seem to be on silly consumer “toy” gadgets (which is still in opinion). However, I am quite pleased by your clean & informative approach to your videos & will be very open to viewing them in the future. Perhaps maybe even a subscribe...? Also, big up for the GGEC mention! Details like that go a long way for those whom need to know.
Cheers
I would imagine this is becoming more common for manufacturers to share components rather than each design and manufacture from scratch.... it's been a common practice in automotive for some years now.
Thanks for the video, always interesting to see what's inside.
Probably the best review and teardown of the Symfonisk (ahem Sonos) (AHEM GGEC) on TH-cam. Nicely done.
For those wondering about the BB symbol on the PCM5101A, that's the logo for Burr-Brown, which is a Texas Instruments subsidiary.
Great job on the teardown -you do a fine job identifying all the hardware, it's origin, and the implications on performance and quality.
You seem to be a little fuzzy on branding, pricing, and other BS -like you never worked at a company that makes these things. The short explanation for all your questions is that engineers DON'T run these companies. For every value proposition they create there is pile of business and marketing executives that justify their high salaries by raising price, changing names, cutting cost, and generally making customers pay as much as possible for as little as possible. Ikea is a major "channel" and brand -thus negotiate a lower price for essentially the same product. Sonos obviously could charge less for it's speaker, but will not because that would "dilute the brand". Still don't see the logic? Well, that's why you (and the 99%) don't make the big bucks executives do! Here is the only logic there is -a bunch of executives at Sonos will justify being paid more by doing this deal with Ikea. They "expanded the ecosystem" while not "diluting the brand" they "raised margins" and "increased tax efficiency". WTF does that mean? The production of the ikea speaker is invisible to Sonos's financial reporting. Only "licensing" payments will be paid by Ikea to the "intellectual property holder" of Sonos in an offshore tax haven. The brilliant management of Sonos has eliminated all payments to anyone that designed, built delivered or protected the world in which this good could be delivered and made it into a refined pure profit that they can use to justify payment to... THEMSELVES!
But if Ikea is selling the same speaker for 50% less, won't the expensive Sonos speakers lose sales? YES! and that "share loss" will be used to justify cutting the pay or limiting the pay of engineers, and all the producers of Sonos speakers! Another win for brilliant management!
you nailed it. plus: i don't think,that ikea pqys "extra". they simply buy these things in 1000s what lowers the price per unit.
They are called the "bean counters", call ALL the shots!
Nice tear-down and market analysis. Thanks TDNC!
Awesome review.
This is the right format for us techie guys.
Lets get some home speaker reviews going!
Anyone remember Quadrasonic Systems ? They were hot during the seventies, they even had Quadrasonic vinyl albums. It was like a double stereo system and required 4 speakers, ah the good old days !
Using those designed-to-fail CapXon capacitors is actually quite interesting seeing that in IKEA's home Scandinavian market we have a minimum 5-year warranty on all non-moving electronics parts, i.e. we have a Supreme Court ruling in Norway stating that a TV remote control has to last at least that long, unless it is the buttons that fail, in which case normal 2-3 year warranties apply.
I've just verified that Symfonisk is in fact available in my local Oslo IKEA stores, so this means that they are most likely just taking a chance, since I don't believe it would make sense to have a different version here.
Thank on the insight, didn't know this so It sure seem is a gamble but then again on the other side we have plenty of idiots in the world who will buy this and either forget and lose the papers when they bought it or don't even care just buy another garbage in a row ... Think the people who will file for warranty will be a minimal number of people for whom the replacement or striking another deal or credit in shop will be a easier way out and overall not that much of a big problem anyway.
Pay us X amount of money and you will get a new ''better'' model. The customer gets another device and they still made some money on it even with a discount. Since these are dirt cheap to produce anyway. They make money on these no matter what.
Even more surprising is the fact that they didn't use MDF for the enclosure, given it's literally what they do best. I have the feeling that IKEA only gave a price point to SONOS and that was it. It's a bit disappointing, as IKEA has all the power and process to sell a much higher quality speaker system at sensible prices.
Great review, I appreciate the in-depth look.
Without any doubt , your explaining is amazing and this is exactly what i want to watch thank you for the information you provided in this video.
Cool!
🤖
Good way for Sonos to get rid of old stock parts clogging their warehouses.
True
Usually companies like these are not holding the pieces of a device in their warehouses. They are manufactured to order, so the GGEC, which is known in audio manufacturing world, produces the parts, orders some parts from third tier suppliers and assembles it all for Sonos or other brand, according to their specs and design. Unless Sonos chose to go with pre-designed audio stacking, and relies more on software to tune the sound to their signature. That would explain the similarities. It's perfectly normal in industry to rely on readymade ( so called off-the-shelf) solutions that are tested and provide good enough quality.
No way. IKEAs sales volume is way higher than what Sonos could have ever achieved
Great teardown and very informative. Sub & a thumb from me, looking forward to more of your presentations in the future :)
Excellent presentation and analysis in this one! Your videos have made me interested in the speaker actually.
When you look at the dirt cheap bill of materials and simple construction, it amazes me this costs as much as £99.
Bill of materials + China labor + factory manager + supply chain + design royalties (pay Sonos?) + shipping + IKEA store overhead... and then to stay in business, your margins need to be like 4x the cost of manufacture. As the narrator to this video says, this speaker probably has an unusually low margin in the hopes that customers buy accessories and other IKEA products. Almost a “doorbuster” product.
Also the design looks like it's a mass produced prototype, mini PCIe in a Speaker to support Wifi, are you kidding me?
@@JonasWilms but it's ~swedish~ and ~scandinavian~
@@dirtfriend BUT, built in China! Where else?
$100 for a speaker that doesn't even have RCA jacks on it- what is the world coming to? Great video sir, thanks for taking a look inside!
Also no Bluetooth of any kind, and no 3.5mm aux jack.
Relax grandpa...
Bigger magnets than I thought.. That's a pluss👍
The damping material don't help with bass response but helps to remove resonance in the box👍
I like the sound of the big eneby alot more than that of the sonos/ikea collab! That bigger enclosure really gives the speaker much more to work with.
Who made this RAM chip?
- Nanya Business.
🤪
(Sorry)
I chucked and had to look it up myself...😂
Nanya means South Asia in its original Mandarin.
I thought it was Speed Ltd. 😁
I thought he said 'Narnia' not 'Nanya'....I was quite disappointed, I always wanted to have tea with Mr Tumnus.
“Comedy gold”
Bishka100 you can have roast lamb with him, aka ram 🐏
I actually have two of these and tried putting them in an "ideal listening position" for stereo. The sound stage was quite impressive! Stereo separation and immersiveness were amazing for 100$ speakers that don't have audiophile aspirations.
If you do have an apartment, do not hesitate to give tyem a try. You might end up amazed.
I am trying to save for buying a Sonos Arc for that atmos. Coupled with the Symfonisks I believe I would get a pretty nice cinematic experience in my small 17^2 meters (180ft) living room.
Give the Symfonisks a try, they are beefier than they look 😂
Totally agree with what you say, and what you have in mind, mean by it...
I also gave it a try. Firstly out of curiousity and practicality. As its purpose makes it a sensible choice to use it in a layout most common in appartments of 30-55m2.
I added a second unit to try the pair of them and so on.
I realy did not expect the result and I simply cannot being amazed enough!
1st of all this doesn't cost 100$ 2nd of all for two you will need almost 300 Euros. For that money I can buy a proper stereo sound system with speakers included that have much more functions and life in it then this garbage ... Even if this would cost 100$ for two is too much money for what it is.
@@minmogrovingstrongandhealthyactually in the US the speakers are 99 each
Very good tear down ... again! Thanks! I left a subs! Greetings, Doc64!
Excellent research and teardown. Loved the video!
The PCB comparison Symfonisk and Play1 is quite the revelation.
They even use the same cheap caps.
The price of this speaker does NOT AT ALL warrant low quality caps. Its only a decision against the consumer to produce a limited lifetime product. Nobody should ever use cheap caps.
nutzeeer Of cause there are products that use cheap caps just to keep the price down. But what most people miss is these two points:
- The original bad caps plague was some factories using a bad electrolyte mix that died much earlier than planned. This was fixed many years ago and you'll have to search old stock on eBay etc. to find new caps with this problem.
- Every big brand offers cap models with different planned lifetime. The current "short lifetime Panasonic" probably dies before the current "long lifetime CapXon", though I haven't any hard data.
nutzeeer everything is cut down in price. Look at Mercedes 😂
@@johnfrancisdoe1563 panasonic is the definition of long life. No product of them we own has ever died. Even our VCR still works.
@@johnfrancisdoe1563 - well said. Personally, I consider CapXon is about the right quality level for what is, basically, a shitty cheap Ikea product.
It's absolutely ridiculous to expect Nichicon, Panasonic or any other "name brand" caps in a GENERIC brand appliance.
Cap brand choices aside - the price difference between a cheap cap and its better variant in relation to the product´s price is more or less negligible, in a device like that it´s most likely less than a dollar.Many manufacturers use 85C caps in consumer products, these caps often start to fail after 2 or 3 years, conveniently not too long after the warranty runs out (planned obsolescence). The 105C variant runs much longer (if it fails at all within the reasonable maximum usage time), as its max temperature rating offers a much larger margin to the usual operating temperatures (around 40 to 60° celsius).The price difference between the temp rating is somewhere around 10%.
The speaker´s equipped with 105s, so even with the cheaper brand caps, it´s reasonable to expect them to last about as long as top brand 85s.
You are such a pro ,best review I've seen and the last weeks i looked for
Really great video and very useful information. Thanks so much!
not having AUX input in the lamp shade speakers is such a missed opportunity. I would have loved to use them as "dumb" speakers on either side of the couch in my 7.1.2 Atmos setup
Is that a LAMP SPEAKER?! Holy crap. I'm going to need some lamp subwoofers to go with it!
@@Trialnerror agreed
How about a bed subwoofer with 2 x 15s 🤣
The ladies live it (click)
@@elissitdesign That sounds like the beds from Max Payne.
I just imagined a lamp rattling and jumping frantically until it drops itself from the table onto the floor.
I love lamp
Brilliant tear down, and analysis, thanks mate!
Thank you! Your video is professional and very detailed!
The capacitors are not just cost cutting but also likely part of the measures taken for planned obsolescence
Cost #1!
Physical obsolescence isn't even needed with this type of device, it's enough to have one of the next generations of "smart" phones to just not support the standards those operate on anymore.
It's an opportunity for us DIYers to hack an analog input (with op-amp line lvl crossovers) into them though, or even turn them into passive speakers altogether, which run with any small amplifier or trusty receiver (from the 80s that still works perfectly of course :) ...)
The drivers themselves look pretty good actually.
What's really disappointing is the fact that Sonos, the so-called "premium" connected speaker manufacturer, is also using crap caps.
Yes I thought that as well... But is 150$ really premium??
@@0ace0hitta0 compared to the cheap alternatives, yes.
@@hillie47 Hi. Can you please tell me about some cheaper alternative? I'm looking for some cheap multi-room wifi audio system and I was not able to find anything cheaper then sonos one. Thanks a lot.
@@JurajMarkoSK for the connected stuff the Sonos play one is probably the cheapest option, but there are some budget not connected speakers you could use. Sonos is premium in the sense that prices go up rapidly from the play one. And to be honest $150 is a lot of money for a simple box with a cheap little amp and speaker. But that seems to be the starting price. Too high is you ask me.
the only premium in sonos is the price ;)
I've never seen a more detailed tear down of an electronic product until this video, subscribing 👍. By the way this video popped up on my recommended videos 😅, I guess because I'm subscribed to LGR.
Very nice detective work. How interesting to learn about the source of the components. Great work as always!
You can google every part more or less.
At one point I thought this review was going to reveal my social security number. The amount of research done here is insane.
All for something that's going to find it's way to Goodwill's Electronics aisle in about 3years!
Great tear down. Highly technical. Way over my head. I was waiting for a “don’t buy this because it’s crap” (I’m a simple man) recommendation but it never came. I get the feeling it’s crap (and SONOS as well?) but am left scratching my head 🤔.
I was hoping same but you're right. This video is a bit too technical for the general public. Having said that, I have a Sono AMP and it is good. Not surround sound but very powerful.
Don't buy because it has CRAP-on caps!
Incredible journalism! Thank you
Nice dissection of both speakers!
"this doesn't sound like a whole lot of RAM" - Yea it sounds massive!
So I go back and look and see that 256MB of ram was standard for our desktops around 2001, but then I realize that was almost 20 years ago. 😮
Alex Tirrell I remember my TinyPC had a 833mhz pentium 3 or something and 128mb of ram. This has a dual core cpu with the main processor running 1GHz and has double the ram! I know it’s not comparable to a slower x86 cpu, but the numbers make for funny comparison.
My first work computer had a whopping 12Mb of RAM. And that was after it was upgraded.
Using CapXon capacitors is probably a way to make sure it doesn't last more than 2-3 years...
Ageve Nisse damn, straight to the point
After a couple years when they do die, take it apart to check the capacitor values, order higher quality replacement capacitors with correct capacitance values and same or higher voltage rating from digikey, than bust out the soldering station and replace them.
@@davidperry4013 You know that 99.9999% of people will buy another. Planned obsolescence is disgusting.
Ageve Nisse floor sweepings... those types of capacitors are generally the first thing that blows in any expensive electronics circuit including computer motherboards. I’ve been able to replace some but without Radio Shack being down the street anymore it’s harder to find the parts. There is a Mouser out in El Cajon somewhere I think they have mail order too.
still running here after 6 years of everyday use, so nah, keep your accusements to yourself.
Great review, i usually don´t watch stuff like this, because usually they keep focussed on the consumer point of view.
Fascinating video. Thank you for such thorough sleuthing!
The lamp version is a Sonos one with a lamp. I live next to IKEA and have checked them all out.
You live next to an IKEA, man I feel bad for you bro...
@@abelincoln7473 Why?
A PowerPC CPU?!?! Sweet
it can be your secret web server :-)
Always to see proper teardowns and analysis of what is inside. Would love to see some Sony teardowns in the future.
I’ve got something like that in the works, but not quite so in-depth on the specific components.
thank u a lot for this video ! nice work ^^
I use a couple of these as rears for my Sonos soundbar as I think the Sonos 1’s are a bit overkill. They do the job admirably
So it's not Ikea to blame cutting the costs down but Sonos, as they are also using CapXon caps in their "premium" products.
I saw that, the Sonos Play:1 is also using the CapXon capacitors.
They were equally involved in the creation process, with Ikea likely having the final say
@@JoshWitte , but Ikea weren't involved when Sonos layed out the Play1. They already used CapXon on their own products, that's what I say.
@@volvoracinggermany ah, gotcha. Well that's unfortunate 😕
Nope, it's always Trump's fault...
Hey superb tear down and analysis!
Great insight and information, thanks. Keep up the great work 👍
This speaker has better cable management than my PC.
It basicly has a pc inside lol
I like the Cyberpunk aesthetic, so of course that's why my PC is a mess of cables, tubes, and LEDs inside totally not because I'm lazy
If course the best advice would be to buy neither to not support throwaway electronics. Thanks for discovering that.
good luck finding any manufacturer that doesn't support TaE. everythings built to a pricepoint noawadaysw not to give end users longevity
Thank you very much for this video!
Nice detective work !
My guess is that they used the same board from the sonos play 1, since it was already being manufactured and didn't cost any startup costs on sonos' part, and the drivers on the smaller eneby matched perfectly with the sonos boards capabilities.
The worlds largest supplier of damping material saves money on damping material. :X
damping material in a vented enclosure does NOT improve the bass, in fact it makes the transient response worse, in a vented enclosure damping mops-up some of the internal back wave energy re-radiating & frequency modulating or acoustically feeding through the cone. In a sealed enclosure damping would increase the apparent volume ( thus improves the bass ) as well as dampen back-wave energy. A lot of engineering @ this price but DOUGH those cheap ass capacitors :-(
@@BogdanWeiss I thought damping material was in there to get rid of standing waves caused by the acoustic room inside the speaker ?
So to make sure you can`t hear the speaker itself as such.
I forgot to thank you. Thanks to you now I have 5.1 with Sonos. I was putting off buying 2 back channel speakers but with this bargain, they were perfect.
Great work as always. Love and appreciate your videos. Felt like a industrial spy tearing it down lol
Whichever company that would COPY THIS design would LOSE money! lol
Also looks like the Play: 1 has just been discontinued and replaced by a Play One without speech recognition. So a definite win to keep using the now retired product as an entry point to Sonos.
Sonos One.
They are not Sonos Play One, the “Play” and “Connect” monicker’s are going/gone. Once they make a new Play:5, Playbar and Playbase nothing will be left with either Play or Connect.
You are like batman for the techworld.
Going all out on detective mode.
Great video, thank you for making it. Very well done :)
Great info and guide. Thanks!
Oh god CapXon... So many bad memories dealing with them..
2019, when 256MB of RAM is referred to as 'not a lot' in the context of a speaker... I'm glad that costs are so low that such decisions can be made, but this still sets me off as being incredibly wasteful.
@Gonçalo Amaro that has been the case for a loooong time. Back in the day, peripherals were often as powerful as the host machines they were attached to.
The NXP requires DDR3 RAM, on mouser a single chip for 1Gbit (128MB) is like $7.65 (NZD), and a 2Gbit (256MB) chip is $8.05, there's also questions of what is compatible based on pins etc, with the NXP.
Nothing smaller from Micron, and the smaller chips from ISSI are more expensive.
PCs used to be able to run a multitasking OS with a GUI *and* business applications with 1 MB of RAM (or even less). Generally speaking, nowhere near that much RAM is required to implement all of the necessary functions for this speaker, although a lot of unnecessary things may be taking up most of the otherwise luxurious 256 MB of RAM it has. Even today, people are doing cool things with microcontrollers that only have 2 *KB* (that's KB!) of RAM on board (e.g. Atmel ATmega328P on the Arduino), though, so not everyone is being so wasteful.
@@microcolonel True, albeit back in the day it was barely enough power to get the job done, whereas today it is way more power than is strictly necessary. They're just doing what's easy and still cost-effective due to technological advances. The two situations end up seeming similar at face value, but underneath they are quite different. While more is expected of peripherals these days (e.g. networking), processing power and memory have far outpaced this--the only thing that has kept pace is bloat. :)
@@woobilicious. generally when you g o smaller, you get the DRAM embedded in the package.
Great video Colin!
Very informative, thank you !
I am a bit troubled over this conception that mono is good. And loud Just easier to sell. As a retired audio technician. Sad to see this
Most audio in this world is Mono. Live Concerts, bluetooth speakers, Auditoriums, Grocery Stores, DMX streaming audio, bluetooth speakers. You know this, being an audio technician. Most professional audio is mixed in mono and then has stereo effects to give it depth and other reasons to work best in multiple environments. It would be cool if you could link 2 of them and have a stereo image.
Years ago I went to see friend in the US . And was blown away with the Bose system.. But wrestling with non discreet wiring.everywhere. Big spaces complete challenges. That's why I went to video peresentation.. Far easier but some complete geniuses in audio presentation. My Bose 101s have served me well for 30 years
For years we got crappy stereo rather than one good mono speaker and expensive stereo systems with speakers set less than two or one feet apart. Calling it mono is often more realistic.
Adamast perhaps you maybe right. But I'll keep my Bose 101s. 30 years old and still going strong .i have tried to replace them
@@adamslawson I'm not sure where you got this idea. Quite the opposite is true, multi-channel 3D surround is taking over. See Dolby Atmos for home. See L'Acoustics for live concert. You are right about announcements in auditoriums and PA in a Grocery store, but not the others. What is DMX streaming audio? (DMX is a lighting control protocol) Zero live concerts are presented in mono.
8:50 - An audiophile's nightmare!
The tpa can sound very nice when its done right, i have a lot of these chinese Boards laying around and some really sound great in combination with high quality (small) speakers.
yeah this is bullshit. how is it possible to say 3" woofer.. and its mono. home audio is going back to the 30's... its a shame to see this glorius comments. no shame
More like a "HORROR SHOW"! lol
Honestly, I did not expect to see the word "audiophile" anywhere in this context...
Great video. Thanks for making it.
Thank you for sharing this video , I hope IKEA will not mind if we used some of the part for our own circuits
Do you know if the Sonos Play:1 and Sonos One use the same low quality CapXon capacity or if they use something a little higher grade?
Kind of crazy to see an IMX6 processor in a smart speaker.
It's close to the functional equivalent of a raspberry pi in your smart speaker.
Maybe the old pi's. The pi4 is a quad core at 1.5ghz. And has way more on board. Still a fair amoumt of processing power for a speaker though, probably cheap to get a hold of these now as they are obsolete for their true purpose.
@@handlesarefeckinstupid you are correct... Were they (imx6) originally intended for infotainment systems and the like?
Great review. The best I've seen on that.
super .. really super. did you hear him say 3" woofer? thats not right in any way at all. Great? my god
Dude, you are very intelligent, I wish I was like you, cheers!