A few weeks after Yamaha upgraded its capitalization defiant MusicCAST multi-room Sonos competitor, Bose – which has been another “traditional” audio manufacturer that has dabbled in multi-room functionality – has trotted out the SoundLink wireless speaker for extending PC audio. As is customary for Bose, few details regarding specs are available but it has acknowledged that the system uses a proprietary wireless connection. My guess is a 2.4 GHz signal like those used by by Sony in its S-Air systems or EOS Wireless in its multi-room system. Having used some of these proprietary PC-based point systems in their early days, I wonder if Bose has done anything to filter out system sounds from the PC since the system comes without software.
In any case, using the PC as the audio source certainly brings some advantages, such as great choice in audio selection, but more systems are tapping directly into Internet music sources. Even some iPod speaker docks without integrated networking can now take advantage of the iPod touch’s Wi-Fi access to stream at least half a dozen Internet radio selections. I suppose the market for this is bedrooms where consumers are already using a laptop as the main audio source but want more flexibility in the placement of the speaker.