[OzarkTom]

Moos Audio, a relatively new Australian company, just received an Innovations 2013 Design & Engineering Award at CES. Their Mini Aero 2-way built entirely at the Danish Scan-Speak facility is a wireless system with built-in amplification, DSP and on-board D/A converters. "The Mini Aero compacts are the best wireless speakers money can buy and aimed at both PC and Mac high-definition digital playback. They are the first ultra-high resolution wireless speakers with lossless bit-accurate transmission of digital audio up to 24bit/96kHz and playback of all data rates up to 24bit/192kHz. Technical highlights include the first ever audiophile-grade wireless transport, Scan-Speak Revelator drivers, ultra high-end quad-mono differential Wolfson DACs with a DAC dedicated to each drive unit (SNR >125dB), ultra-low jitter design, all-aluminum unibody port with dual symmetrical flares, metal-reinforced Baltic birch plywood cabinets, composite internal damping of specially processed long-fiber natural wool and aerospace-grade acoustic foam developed for NASA space missions, SHARC floating point DSP and audiophile-grade Hypex amplification capable of delivering 400w continuous per speaker pair peaking at 1kW."

These elegantly proportioned speakers are available in gloss black, white, red and yellow at $2499/pr (plus tax) with the first limited production run slated for April 2013. The Mini Aero can be purchased directly online.
http://www.moosaudio.com/

I would love to try these out for a spin. 

[jtwrace]

I would love to try these out for a spin. 

Me too!

[lowtech]

Let me know how it works out for you.  You can pre-order a pair right now directly on their UNsecured web site.  http://www.moosaudio.com/pre-order/   

[Russell Dawkins]

Very interesting. There's a lot of expensive technology packed into these - drivers alone retail for $1168 - then there's the ADDA, the DSP, the amps. Impressive.

[JLM]

Similar to other active speakers with built-in DAC, but these speakers hint at good value and has the latest/popular/hi-end bits. 


One example of an active speaker with built-in DAC: AVi ADM-9T:

http://www.avihifi.co.uk/adm9.html


Some designers would rather design the speaker "right" to start with and forgo DSP.

And the info is sketchy.  Wondering what technology is being used to allow wireless connection (most don't support high resolution signals, suffer latency, and/or drop outs).

[poseidonsvoice]

This most definitely is an interesting design and could be a great system for several folks, think apartment, etc...for $2500 a complete bargain. Even the North Creek Kitty Cat monitor which uses similar/same drivers retails for that but in the Moos system you have the amp, dac, dsp all integrated. Just plug your Mac computer, Pure Music and you are done. Wow.

Nice find!

Anand.

[Norman Tracy]

Above JLM writes “Some designers would rather design the speaker "right" to start with and forgo DSP.”

I read that statement as a denigration of the use of DSP in speaker design. As a member of the pro-DSP camp I would like to discuss some of the pros and cons.

My personal preference is to have the amplifier as directly connected to the speaker drive unit as possible. In small cost constrained designs I prefer full range drivers that allow that direct connection accepting the less flat frequency response, curtailed bandwidth and loudness capability in trade for the more transparent phase coherent sound I hear. That tradeoff is a personal preference. In more ambitious designs that become larger and (or just) more complex with a similar rise in the resources (a.k.a. ca$h) available I will bi or tri amp with analog or digital crossovers upstream before the amplifiers and use high level filter networks between the amp and drivers only as a last resort. This is the point of the discussion where someone typically objects they don’t want to pay for and house a rack full of expensive amps and electronic crossovers like my personal DEQX based system. That objection is answered by building the DSP crossover and amps into the speaker like the Moos Audio system under discussion (and similar designs from Dynaudio, Genelic, et.al.).

Lest this post become a book on speaker design lets limit the discussion to the advantages DSP brings to a high performance 2-way mini-monitor, the architecture of the Moos Audio Mini Aero.

On the tweeter side if one trusts your amplifier not to thump or otherwise misbehave at DC we can direct connect the tweeter to its amp. Very quickly listening to this direct connection one develops an allergy to the effect on our delicate ethereal high frequency overtones’ sound of being forced to jump across the plastic of even the best capacitors used in traditional 20th century high level crossovers placed between amp and driver. Tweeters also like it, a lot, when the DSP crossover agressively attenuates the low frequency out of band signals below its crossover point. This can of course be done using high level crossovers but one seldom sees designs that go beyond 4th order 24 dB/octave filters because it places so many lossy components between amp and driver that sound bad and in a design with high aspirations must be expensive audio grade parts.  The phase nasty’s of high order filters become audible which is another area a clever DSP programmer can address.

For the woofer in a 2-way mini-monitor architecture DSP is a real godsend. Again direct connection of amplifier to driver just sounds better. My opinion is the more subtle to understand but large in effect problem with traditional high level crossovers is they have no gain, only attenuation. That point may seem stupidly obvious but also consider the typical design requirement of providing baffle step correction. Recall that given our convention of listening to high-end speakers pulled away from room boundaries we have to boost the bass below the frequency where the dimensions of the baffle cause the speaker to switch from forward to spherical radiation (see http://sound.westhost.com/bafflestep.htm). For a mini-monitor the baffle step frequency is between 350 to 800 Hz. With no gain available in traditional high level crossovers the only choice is to attenuate the frequencies above the baffle step by typically 3 dB. Now recall dBs are a logarithmic scale so -3 dB is a voltage ratio of 0.707. So taken together a mini-monitor on a stand away from room boundaries using a high level crossover has to dump 30% of the amplifier’s signal above ~500 Hz straight to ground through an inductor in order to sound musically balanced. Returning for a moment to the tweeter the Scan-Speak drivers used in the Mini Aero are typical in that while the woofer is specified as 85.5 dB/2.83v/1m the tweeter is 94.5 dB/2.83v/1m. After baffle step correction where the woofer meets the tweeter we’ve knocked another 3 dB off its sensitivity so 94.5 – 82.5 = 12 dBs(!) of attenuation is needed on the tweeter. Minus 12 dB is a 0.25 voltage ratio so for every volt of amplifier input in the tweeters pass band I need to shunt 0.75 volts of that off straight to ground. With the crossovers ahead of the amps we can do 3 dB bass boost in DSP or analog filters and take care of the 9 dB difference between woofer and tweeter sensitivities by setting the amplifiers’ gains accordingly. Finally back to the bass system with DSP we can EQ the low bass to extend the low frequency cutoff and now with a closed fully characterized system when high level operation threatens to overload the woofer smart limiting is trivial for a good DSP programmer. The designer using traditional high level crossovers has to be more conservative in his bass alignment with some safety margin in there as the only limiter is the end users good sense.

In summary the point is for many audiophiles we have experienced instances where analog sounded better than digital. Out of that experience we can develop a knee jerk reaction analog good, digital bad therefore DSP equipped speaker must be inferior. A more considered approach is to consider the contrasting systems’ error sources and the mechanisms of those errors. For the traditional 20th century high level crossover system many of the errors and noise budget are related to the lossy components that make up that crossover stuck between the amp and drivers. Those losses are both intentional as explored above and unintentional (for example the dielectric absorption in all those nasty caps). For the 21st century DSP equipped bi-amped system there are also sources of errors. Now twelve years and counting into the new millennium using 32 bit floating point DSPs, pS jitter clocks, and 192k/24bit DACs those errors resulting from the digital side can be made quite small indeed.

And I still cannot figure out how Moos Audio can sell the Mini Aero for under $2500 given its bill of materials cost. Somebody must have anteed up for some major investment in parts to get the cost down.

[Rclark]

that's gonna be some state of the art action for not a lot of coin. 80% Ncore in those if I'm not mistaken. Some Stealth 8 killers lol. A grand more expensive but must be spectacular.

[OzarkTom]

Since Moos Audio is calling these speakers Mini Aeros, I would suspect more and bigger models in the near future. This is definitely one company that I am going to keep watching.

[tom_moosaudio]

Hello Everybody,

First a quick intro - I'm Tom and I'm the founder of Moos Audio. My history in the audio world goes back over a decade and includes 3 years at Linn's R&D department in the UK. I also have a fairly unique background in wireless audio, and have my name on several patents. I'm a big fan of all things analog, but at the same time I also have an appreciation of the power, and benefits, of digital processing *if done right* - this comes from my academic background. To me it's all about the music, and that means doing whatever it takes - digital, analog, or both - to get as close as possible to that elusive "true" rendition of the recorded material.

@OzarkTom - Thank you for finding Moos and kicking off this discussion, really appreciated!  And yes, there will be other models down the line, including larger ones!

@JLM re DSP - You are absolutely right that designing a speaker correctly must be the foundation. Would I postulate using a DSP to correct what is inherently a bad design? Absolutely not, as there are many problems a DSP simply cannot correct. But even with an excellent physical design, there is *always* room for improvement - and that's where judicious use of DSP can make a subtle yet important difference, *especially* when everything else has been done extremely well. In terms of the Mini Aero, the strategy was first and foremost to come up with an extremely good physical design, and to combine this with the power of DSP. The Aero's cabinets are just about completely acoustically dead due to extensive bracing and internal metal reinforcement; the tweeters are offset to minimise diffraction effects; the port is made of aluminium, with solid flares machined from solid aluminium on both ends, and is fused into a thick aluminium back panel for maximum structural stability; we paid great attention to internal energy dissipation and to controlling standing waves, etc, etc. We really went to great lengths to make sure this was an exceptional physical design first and foremost - very, very few compact monitor go to the lengths we went to, even for 'cost no object' designs.

@JLM re wireless - as per our website, the wireless transport "is the first to achieve reliable transmission of 100% lossless, bit-accurate, high-resolution digital audio content at up to and including 24bit/96kHz. The system supports playback of 24bit/192kHz". We have been demonstrating playback based on 24bit/96kHz transmission virtually round the clock here at CES, in a Las Vegas hotel. The RF (wireless) environment here is totally saturated, to the point where it is almost impossible to get a WiFi connection. Even under these conditions we have been able to play with remarkable resilience. And yes, wireless audio used to suck - but things change. 

@Norman Tracy - thank you for the eloquent exposition re benefits of DSP and active crossovers; could not have said it better myself!

@Rclark - so I am inevitably biased, but yes, they ARE spectacular. Let's put it this way, they sound better than what used to be my main system, consisting of Musical Fidelity M6PRX, Linn Klimax pre, and Musical Fidelity M1DAC (I also own a couple of other high-end DACs), and a pair of very nice monitors (I shall not name them out of professional courtesy as, in some way, we are competitors). Don't get me wrong - my main system sounded fantastic, as you would expect given the components. But the Mini Aero sound better.

Finally - the price. I'm glad to see we all agree that $2500 is a bargain! There is a logical explanation for this: (1) we have invested a considerable amount into parts so we get great pricing, (2) we are selling the Mini Aero direct, and (3) we are keeping our margins very thin. We did this because we want to bring serious high-end sound to as many people as possible.

[tktran303]

Hi Tom,

What is happening with your Moos Audio Mini model? I have been on the mailinglist since Jan/Feb 2012 since the announcement, and was awaiting pre-order but have not heard anything since.

Did his end up being vaporware?

[OzarkTom]

Thanks for the info Tom. I will anxiously wait for your larger versions.

[srb]

What are the wired inputs available on these speakers? Are there both digital and analog?  Among the photos of the speakers on the website I did not see any of the rear panel.  Are there any specifications available?

Steve

[Mark V.]

REALLY VERY interesting loudspeaker! But some more information about the specs and possibilities would be great. Some information I would like to know:

- Is there (digital or analog) output for subwoofer? If yes, can this be configurated (X-over) via PC, or is it just full-range output?
- Is it possible to make changes to X-over and/or equalizing functions within those speakers?
- Some more technical details about the wireless connectivity system which is used would be nice to know too.

Thanks in advance,

Mark.

[Rclark]

Wow... taking another look.. Wireless 24/196.. Scanspeak Revelator drivers.. 125dB SNR on the dac (with matching SNR on the amps), metal reinforced chassis..

$2499? Checkmate?

[stevenkelby]

It would be nice to get some data on freq. response (3db down point) and max SPL so we can think about whether a sub is needed, and in how big of a room they will be suitable.

[highfilter]

I asked Tom from Moos Audio about what kind of connections are on the speakers and he replied with:

To answer your question, the pre-production models only have the wireless connection (so yes, only a power chord), but the design actually has a wired connection capability built in. We are working through the decision of whether to expose this wired connection on the production version, or not. The use of the wired interface would be as backup for the wireless, though we don't anticipate this to be a common requirement. The wired connection is not as elegant as the wireless, both in terms of aesthetics and also in terms of setup - these things are always a trade-off.

[jackman]

Anyone hear these yet?

[J@ck]

I'm very interested in this concept. But after some searching online, I couldn't find any news after May(their blog).
Anyone got theirs yet? Any impression? News?
Thank you.

[DaveC113]

I'm very interested in this concept. But after some searching online, I couldn't find any news after May(their blog).
Anyone got theirs yet? Any impression? News?
Thank you.

+1