Ruark Audio selects Nordic Semiconductor RF technology for its retro-styled R7 music center
Ruark Audio’s existing high quality, small form factor product range have been repeatedly voted class-leaders by some of the world’s leading consumer audio magazines, such as What Hi-Fi Sound & Vision?, and the higher-end R7 music center has received according to Ruark a record number of pre-launch registration enquiries from customers eager not to miss one of the first production-run units when they become available later this year.
The forthcoming flagship R7 music center is said to have taken three years to develop and was inspired by the design of 1960s radiograms that were music centers built into high quality wooden cabinets and designed to take pride-of-place in customer living rooms.
"However, the R7 will be anything but old fashioned in terms of its functionality and performance," comments the Founder and Managing Director of Ruark Audio, Alan O’Rourke. "It will feature a high performance CD player, Bluetooth wireless technology with aptX (a leading type of audio compression technology popular for higher quality wireless audio streaming from Bluetooth enabled portable devices such as smartphones), and Wi-Fi for streaming from computers and music servers. There’s also a DAB+/FM/Internet radio, and the inputs for a wide range of auxiliary devices including TVs and DVD/Blu-ray players so that the R7 can also double up as home cinema audio solution too."
"But we quickly realized trying to give the customer any kind of simple, convenient and intuitive control over this kind of all-on-one functionality was way beyond the capabilities of a conventional IR [infra-red] remote control," admits O’Rourke. "Which is why we decided to develop our first ever RF remote control: the ‘RotoDial’."
Ruark Audio leveraged a reference design from Nordic Semiconductor that could be modified to meet the company’s needs while offering an IR-comparable battery life of one year from a regular CR2032 watch battery."
www.ruarkaudio.com/products/r7-preview
www.nordicsemi.com
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