Shared Calibration State for Consistent Multi-Room Audio
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing media playback systems face challenges in maintaining calibration across multiple devices and environments, leading to inconsistent audio quality due to changes in device configuration, location, and acoustics, which affects the listening experience.
Innovation Solution
The implementation of a calibration state variable that is stored and shared across devices within a media playback system, allowing for the maintenance of calibration status through power cycling, detection of environmental changes, and automatic recalibration procedures, ensuring consistent audio performance across zones.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If calibration is performed manually for each device and environment, then initial calibration accuracy is achieved, but calibration consistency is lost across power cycles and environmental changes
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs calibration in advance and stores the calibration state variable persistently. When the device restarts or environment changes, the pre-stored calibration state is retrieved and applied automatically, eliminating the need for repeated manual calibration procedures.
Solution Approach 2:
The calibration state variable is copied and stored across multiple devices in the network. When one device's calibration state changes, this information is propagated to other devices, ensuring consistent calibration across the entire system without requiring each device to be calibrated independently.
2Reliability
If calibration state is stored locally on each device, then calibration information is preserved across power cycles, but calibration consistency across devices deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The system implements a feedback mechanism where calibration state variables are continuously monitored and updated across the network. Devices exchange calibration status information, and the system automatically detects when recalibration is needed, maintaining both local persistence and global consistency through continuous feedback loops.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent combines local calibration state storage with centralized coordination through network communication. Each device maintains its calibration state locally for persistence, while simultaneously participating in a network-wide calibration management system that ensures uniformity across all devices by merging individual calibration states into a coherent system-wide state.
3Reliability
If automatic recalibration is implemented upon detecting environmental changes, then audio quality consistency is maintained, but system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system implements self-service calibration where devices automatically detect environmental changes, retrieve updated calibration state variables from the network, and apply recalibration without user intervention. The calibration management system autonomously monitors device status, detects when recalibration is needed, and executes the recalibration process, reducing system complexity from the user perspective.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces a calibration management intermediary that handles the complexity of environmental monitoring and recalibration triggering. This intermediary component coordinates between environmental sensors, network communication, and calibration execution, isolating the complexity from the main system and simplifying the overall architecture by centralizing calibration management functions.
Data Source
AI summary
Example techniques involve a calibration state variable. An example implementation receives, via a network interface, an indication that the first playback device is calibrated. Based on receiving the indication that the first playback device is calibrated, the example implementation updates a calibration state variable to indicate that the first playback device is calibrated, wherein the calibration state variable is stored in the data storage. The example implementation sends, via the network interface, an indication of the updated calibration state variable to a second device.