Big Picture Big Sound

For music lovers, these are interesting times. As portable entertainment devices and music streaming apps proliferate, it's becoming easier to listen to whatever music you want virtually anywhere. The only problem? The speakers built into tablets, phones and PCs are generally pretty terrible.

You can always buy a dock or powered speakers, but then you'll need to plug your device into the speaker in order to get sound, and there goes the portability. You could also use a wireless Bluetooth speaker to stream music from your phone or tablet, but then you'll also hear your phone ringing, message alerts and app notifications coming out of that speaker as well. And as much as I like Words with Friends, I don't need the whole room to know that it's time for me to make a move.

Apple offers AirPlay as a way of streaming music to different rooms in your house, but then you'll need your entire ecosystem to be Apple: iTunes on your device or PC to manage your music, and AirPlay built into the speakers, receiver or other playback device. SONOS offers a nice wireless music distribution system, but it's also proprietary in that the SONOS App can only stream music to SONOS powered speakers. So what's a poor music-lover to do?

DTS thinks they have the solution, and it's called Play-Fi. DTS calls it "Hi-Fi over Wi-Fi" and that's what it is: the ability to stream music to speakers within your home using your existing wireless network. Play-Fi is similar to SONOS and AirPlay in that it allows music lovers to play their local music files, or music streaming apps from their phone, tablet or PC to speakers wirelessly, via a home network. Install the Play-Fi app on your phone, tablet or PC and you can stream your music to Play-Fi-enabled speakers anywhere in your home. But the difference with Play-Fi is that DTS is making a strong push to license the technology out to other consumer electronics companies: receiver-makers, speaker manufacturers and home networking companies, to name a few. The plan is to get the Play-Fi technology out to as many manufacturers as possible so whatever speakers you decide to listen to music through will be Play-Fi-enabled.

Today, DTS has some big news: the Play-Fi app, previously only available for Android devices and for Windows PCs, is now available in Apple's app store. So now you can load Play-Fi onto your iPhone or iPad, and stream your music to any Play-Fi-enabled device. At launch, the Apple version of the app only supports local music playback (e.g., your iTunes music files which are on your tablet or phone) as well as Pandora. But DTS reps tell us they are planning to add additional services to the app, some of which (like Internet Radio) are already available in the Android app. New services will be accessible over time via updates to the Play-Fi app in the App store.

Now with apps available on Android, iOS and Windows, the current weak link in the Play-Fi chain is the selection of actual speaker hardware which is Play-Fi enabled. At the present time, only a few models of speaker and one wireless amplifier are available from two companies, the DTS-owned Phorus and Wren Sound Systems. But DTS tells us to stay tuned for announcements from additional hardware manufacturers at next week's CEDIA Expo as well as at CES 2014.

More information:

 

• Play-Fi web site
• Phorus PS1 Speaker Review