Wednesday, February 16, 2005

Yamaha YSP-1

Yamaha has a new sound technology and it's, to use a highly technical term, "pretty freaky." They're calling it a digital sound projector, and it's designed to create a 5.1 surround sound environment with a single unit.

That's been done before (with mixed results), but not like this. The single component contains 42 individual drivers (they're 1 1/2" each, I believe). Here's a picture:
http://www.yamaha.ca/av/YSP1/main.jsp.

Does that look amazing or what?

Even more amazing, the sound is apparently very impressive. It's about $1100 over the Web, which isn't cheap, but your audio sources plug directly into the unit--in other words, it acts as both speaker AND receiver. So it's not a bad deal at all for what it does.

Here's a thread on AVS that talks about the unit:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=497766&highlight=ysp1.

This wouldn't be for everyone, but if you live in an apartment or want a 5.1 setup without the hassle of mounting speakers and running wires, it's a great option.

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