Devialet's newest technology...?

[Antoine]

Can anyone explain what this patent application by Devialet is about. I thought it might provide a clue to future developments but having skimmed through it find it quite confusing.

http://www.faqs.org/patents/app/20140003619

Wow, very interesting! What I make of it is an enclosure/box that houses a or multiple integrated loudspeaker drivers with internet/streaming/conventional analog/digital inputs (and outputs to hook it up to external audio systems) and amplifiers, that knows where similar boxes are relative to it's own position allowing someone to dynamically couple multiple of these boxes (master, slave) into one single system. The system adapts the output so if you have for example two boxes and later add another two to the right side of the room the left two will play the left signal and the right two the right. It can also steer and divide bass, mids and highs over multiple boxes so one could create a 'speaker wall'. It is a smart system, through inbuilt microphones and accelerometers the boxes adapt/synchronize to each other to compensate for relative distance, height, rotation etc. But you could also use multiple sources and play to selected boxes. The way the boxes adapt to each other also makes it possible and very easy to move boxes and they even adapt while you move them. But you could also take one or more with you to an other room for example. The boxes communicate though WiFi/Zigbee/Bluetooth or wired.

The boxes by the way could have multiple loudspeaker drivers and amplifiers but also only a or multiple amplifiers OR loudspeaker drivers. Perhaps even multi-channel like 5.1 or 7.1 becomes a possibilty but I don't see that mentioned, I do see mentioned extracting the L+R signals from such an input. Also they could be battery operated or through an external PSU.

These patent texts are a bit hard to read as they are so abstract so if and when it is put into production I'm curious to the 'marketing texts' to really see how it is meant. It really looks interesting though, it's sort of a Sonos multiroom system on a very big dose of steroids! Not really something -as I understand it now and if that is correct- I'd myself probably go for as a replacement of my stereo system but I think it could be appealing for a lot of people, families etc. or even for myself as a multi room system.

edit: the more I read through the patent text the more functionalities I discover. It are Swiss army knives!