We're used to large quantities of "me too" design and product from most smaller manufacturers -- with China hosting some of the worst offenders -- but
Edifier is breaking the mold with a couple of new home audio products. The Chinese company has put quite a bit of thought and design into its "Active IR" Rainbow wireless audio system, which uses a wide IR spectrum for ultra-low-loss uncompressed digital transmission. All it takes is a 3.5mm input and you're set, with transmissions from the base station to receivers working at up to 15 meters. The sound is supposedly CD quality, and it certainly sounded good to our ears. The other item of note is the iF380 iPod dock (pictured), which includes a 7-inch LCD, SD card and USB inputs, and some 25 Watt speakers. The €350 pricetag might be hard to swallow when this rolls around in July, but the unit is certainly quite a bit sexier than its competition.
posted March 4th 2008 5:51AM
what a strange, strange name. OTOH, i'm sure it's 1/10 the price of something BOSE makes!
I have used Edifier's Rainbow IR System at home. I use it with my Home Theatre System (5.1ch) and sometimes I use it with my iPod. The Rainbow system provides wireless audio transmission. Before using it, I worried about the problem of line-of-sight but finally I found no problem. It's because Rainbow is using "Diffused Infrared" technology. The infrared is emitted from the transmitter (Tx) at a wide angle and can be reflected from ceiling and wall to the receiver (Rx). The transmission is not broken when I stand in the middle of the Tx and Rx.