Category: Technology

Supporting Dolby Atmos and packed with streaming features, the Bose SB900 soundbar aims to give your lounge room an audio overhaul.

While today’s 4K and 8K televisions deliver a stunning picture, their super-thin design means they can be found wanting when it comes to sound quality. That’s where it pays to upgrade to a sound system which helps bring movie night to life.

Of course, not everyone has the budget or the space for a true “surround” sound system with speakers spread around the room. The compromise is a soundbar which sits below the screen to deliver bigger, bolder sound.

The SB900 is Bose’s first Dolby Atmos-capable soundbar, letting you get the most from the high-end soundtracks on Ultra HD Blu-ray discs and some streaming services.

Along with the ability to throw sound around the room to create a wide soundstage, it also features upwards-firing speakers to help recreate Atmos’ sense of height and deliver more immersive sound.

Review: Bose SB900 sound bar

first impressions

The Bose SB900 soundbar sports a surprisingly slender design for one which packs in so many speakers. At only 5.81 cm tall, it can likely sit on the bench in front of your television without blocking your view of the screen. Alternatively, you can mount the soundbar on the wall, below a wall-mounted screen.

The clean design includes a glass top which features touch-sensitive buttons so as not to spoil the look from the front. The upwards-firing speakers are also subtly inset so as not to draw attention, ensuring it doesn’t look out of place in your lounge room.

There’s a thin LED light bar below the buttons which indicates the status of the soundbar with a confusing array of colors and patterns. It doesn’t act as a power light, assumingly so as not to distract you from your movie. There are times when you can find yourself wishing for some kind of front display, such as the volume level or which audio source is selected.

At the back, you’ll find indents which place the inputs on a 45-degree angle rather than pointing straight back – making it easier to mount it on a wall or push it back against a television base without the protruding cables getting in the way .

One disappointment is that there’s only a single HDMI port on the back, along with digital optical. This is fine for running audio from your television to the soundbar via eARC HDMI cables, but some people might prefer a second HDMI port as a pass-through so they can run sources like disc players into the soundbar and then run the picture out of the soundbar to television.

There’s also an Ethernet port on the back, accompanying built-in Wi-Fi, to support the soundbar’s wide range of streaming features which make it easy to fling audio around your home.

set-up

While the soundbar looks quite elegant, the remote control is rather basic and clunky. That’s in part because many of the soundbar’s advanced features can only be accessed via the Bose Music smartphone app (iOS/Android), which is required to set-up the soundbar before first use.

The app can link to a range of streaming services including Spotify, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn, Deezer and iHeartRadio.

Acknowledging it’s limited access to advanced features, the physical remote sports six preset buttons which you can configure to play audio from your favorite music services without the need to reach for your phone.

The soundbar’s initial set-up includes calibrating the speaker to the room using Bose’s ADAPTiQ technology. Different vendors approach this in different ways. Some units have built-in speakers to listen to the acoustics of the room, while others come with an external speaker which connects by cable and can be placed around the room. Some Sonos units require you to do a rain dance with your phone to capture the acoustics of the room.

With the SB900, Bose supplies a headset which connects to the soundbar via a long cable. The set-up then instructs you to sit in different places around the room, wearing the headset, so it can hear what you’ll hear and adjust the audio characteristics to suit.

If you want to bump up the sound, Bose offers an optional subwoofer for $949 and optional rear surround speakers for $529. Of course, by the time you’ve spent all that, you might have been better off looking at a true surround sound system.

Within the app you can access a two-band EQ, along with control of the center channel and height channel. There’s also dialogue boost mode, which is handy at night so you don’t need to constantly ride the volume in an effort to hear the dialogue without waking the household during the noisy scenes.

Bose SB900 sound bar specs

Features

When it comes to enjoying movies and TV shows, the Bose SB900 soundbar is designed to support up to Dolby Atmos sound – thanks to nine speakers precisely arranged in the cabinet.

That’s two tweeters, four transducers, a center tweeter and those two upward-firing dipole transducers.

Bose’s PhaseGuide psychoacoustics technology helps bounce sound around the room to create a sense of surround sound, but it naturally can’t trick you into thinking there’s a speaker behind you.

One of Dolby Atmos’ strengths is a sense of height, although it’s obviously not as impressive from an upwards-firing soundbar as it is from a true surround system with speakers in the roof. When you’re not listening to an Atmos soundtrack, Bose TrueSpace technology remixes stereo and 5.1-channel sound to recreate that sense of height. There’s no way to disable this, which could frustrate purists.

The lack of DTS support, downmixing to PCM 2.0, also might frustrate some people, depending on what’s in your video library. Many Blu-ray movies don’t offer 5.1 Dolby Digital sound. Instead, they feature a 7.1 DTS-HD soundtrack which, on a DTS-less sound system, leaves you listening to upscaled 2-channel sound.

The soundbar also has a lot to offer music lovers, with support for Chromecast, Apple AirPlay 2 and Spotify Connect streaming from devices around your home such as smartphones, tablets and computers.

There’s also two-way Bluetooth support, letting you connect your devices to play music or connect Bose Bluetooth headphones to listen to music or sound from the television.

That internet access is also put to use supporting Google Assistant and Amazon’s Alexa. You can either call on them with their wake phrase or press the button on the top of the soundbar to get their attention – which seems inconvenient considering that most home entertainment gear has a wake button on the remote control. There’s also a mute button on the soundbar when you want your smart assistant to stop listening.

Bose Voice4Video technology expands Alexa’s voice capabilities. In addition to controlling the soundbar, she can also control your television and connected devices.

Bose SB900 soundbar Quality

Out of the box the sound is a little underwhelming, but ADAPTiQ calibration helps bring it to life with more full-bodied sound. The bass still feels a little underdone on the default settings, but you can bump this up to suit your tastes.

The Bose SB900 soundbar delivers an impressively wide soundstage, but the sense of height is less pronounced than rival Atmos soundbars such as the Sonos Arc, Samsung HW-Q90R and LG SL10YG. You can also adjust the height settings to make the effect more pronounced, which only makes a slight difference.

The soundbar does a great job with Dolby Atmos soundtracks, keeping everything tight in the moving car fight scene in dead pool. When it comes to Atmos’ sense of height, the B-24 bombing raid in unbroken isn’t as impressive as I’ve heard on other high-end Atmos soundbars.

The quality gets a little uneven when you’re listening to 5.1-channel audio and relying on BoseTrue to extrapolate, such as the foyer fight scene in The Matrix. It can get a tad murky in places. BoseTrue’s attempts to add a sense of height are most noticeable when it comes to high-end sounds like breaking glass and bullet shells hitting the ground.

When it comes to music, the SB900 can hold its own but sounds a tad bright if you favor the richer sound of its rival Sonos. It performs admirably with nuanced music like acoustic guitar and jazz, but can get a Tad Murky in the middle when hard rockers take the stage.

GadgetGuy’s take

The Bose SB900 soundbar ticks a lot of boxes, especially if you’re already a Bose fan and own Bluetooth headphones which will connect to the soundbar. It looks great in your lounge room and it’s packed with streaming features for flinging music from your various devices.

The soundbar does a fine job with Atmos soundtracks, even though that sense of height isn’t the best in the business when it comes to soundbars with upward-firing speakers. Make sure you weigh it up against the Sonos Arc, especially if you’d make the most of Sonos’ more extensive multi-room ecosystem.

Would I buy it?

Maybe, but only if I was sure the Sonos Arc wasn’t right for me

Quantum computers are extremely powerful devices with speeds and computational capabilities that are far beyond the reach of classical, or binary, computing. Instead of the binary system of zero and unit, it operates through superposition, which can be zero, one, or both at the same time.

The ever-evolving development of quantum computing has reached the point of having an advantage over classical computers for an artificial problem. This may have future applications in many areas. A promising class of problems involves the simulation of quantum systems, with potential applications such as developing materials for batteries, industrial catalysis and nitrogen fixing.

paper, published in Nature, explores near- and medium-term possibilities for quantum simulation on analog and digital platforms to help evaluate the potential of this field. It has been co-authored by researchers from Strathclyde, Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics, Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich, Munich Center for Quantum Science and Technology, University of Innsbruck, Institute of Quantum Optics and Austrian Academy of Quantum Information. of Science, and Microsoft Corporation.

Andrew Daly, a professor in Strathclyde’s Department of Physics, is the paper’s lead author. He said: “In recent years there have been quite exciting advances in analog and digital quantum simulation, and quantum simulation is one of the most promising areas of quantum information processing. It is already quite mature in terms of algorithm development, and In the availability of internationally quite advanced analog quantum simulation experiments.

“In computing history, classical analog and digital computing coexisted for more than half a century, with the gradual transition towards digital computing, and we expect the same to happen with the emergence of quantum simulation.

“As the next step with the development of this technology, it is now important to discuss ‘practical quantum advantages’, at which point quantum devices will solve problems of practical interest that are not tractable to conventional supercomputers.

“Many of the most promising short-term applications of quantum computers fall under the umbrella of quantum simulation: modeling the quantum properties of microscopic particles that are directly relevant to understanding modern materials science, high-energy physics and quantum chemistry.

“Quantum simulation should be possible in the future on fault-tolerant digital quantum computers with greater flexibility and accuracy, but it can still be done today for specific models by means of special-purpose analog quantum simulators. aerodynamics, which can be operated either in a wind tunnel or through simulations on a digital computer. Where aerodynamics often uses small scale models to understand something larger, analog quantum simulators often use something smaller To understand it, let’s take a large scale model.

“Analog quantum simulators are now moving from providing qualitative demonstrations of physical phenomena to providing quantitative solutions to native problems. A particularly exciting way in the near term is the development of programmable quantum simulators hybridizing digital and analog techniques.” The development of a series is of great potential because it combines the best benefits of both sides by using native analog operations to produce highly entangled states.”

The University of Strathclyde and all the partners on this Perspectives article have large, active programs involving the principles of both architecture and algorithms, as well as the development of platforms for analog quantum simulation and digital quantum computing. The partners are collaborating as part of the Horizon 2020 EU Quantum Technologies flagship project PASQuanS. At Strathclyde, research in this area is strongly embedded in the UK’s National Quantum Technology programme, and has received substantial funding from UK Research and Innovation.

A quantum technology cluster is embedded in the Glasgow City Innovation District, an initiative run by Strathclyde in conjunction with Glasgow City Council, Scottish Enterprise, Entrepreneurial Scotland and the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce. It is envisioned as a global venue for quantum industrialization, attracting companies to co-locate, accelerate growth, improve productivity and access world-class research technology and talent at Strathclyde.

The University of Strathclyde is the only academic institution to have been a participant in all four EPSRC-funded Quantum Technology Hubs in both phases of funding. At the center are: sensing and timing; Quantum Enhanced Imaging; Quantum Computing and Simulation, and Quantum Communications Technologies.

In a recent twitter posts, Steam Deck surprised fans with news that Steam Deck availability will improve by the end of the year. People with Q4 reservations will be bumped up to Q3. People with reservations for early next year will be bumped up to Q4 of this year.

Steam released the Steam Deck earlier this year, and it quickly became one of the most anticipated consoles in recent history. The Steam Deck is a hand-held console similar in form to the Nintendo Switch. Manufactured by Valve, the Steam Deck boasts enough processing power to run AAA games right in the palms of users’ hands. It also allows players access to their Steam library anytime anywhere.

However, like many of its fellow consoles, they faced many difficulties with procurement of parts. Chip shortages and manufacturing delays due to COVID-19 forced Steam to push the release of the console to February of this year. The console was supposed to release in fall of 2021.

Great news: Everyone who currently has a reservation can get their Steam Deck by the end of this year! We’ve cleared up supply chain issues, a bunch of folks got moved up to Q3, and all other reservations are now in Q4.

More details here:https://t.co/Xj2yEHqpKZ pic.twitter.com/floa2xZelK

— Steam Deck (@OnDeck) July 29, 2022

The good news is Steam Deck availability will improve sooner than anticipated. Like with other consoles on the market, production restrictions lifting will allow Steam to produce more consoles faster than expected. On their recent blog post, Steam shared the news that all reservations will be bumped up. Those with reservations in Q4 will receive their Deck in Q3. Those with reservations in Q1 of next year will be moved to Q4 of this year.

Steam clarified that this is only for those with current reservations. Any orders placed in the future will automatically be added in the Q4 bucket. If they are unable to fill those new orders, they will move them to Q1 of next year.

SOURCES: TwitterSteam

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab believe that putting deep learning into the analog realm will be the key to both increasing the performance of artificial intelligence (AI) systems and dramatically improving its energy efficiency — and have come up with the hardware required to do exactly that.

“The working mechanism of the device is electrochemical insertion of the smallest ion, the proton, into an insulating oxide to modulate its electronic conductivity,” explains senior author Bilge Yildiz, professor at MIT, of the processor the team has developed. “Because we are working with very thin devices, we could accelerate the motion of this ion by using a strong electric field, and push these ionic devices to the nanosecond operation regime.”

The processor is based on earlier work to develop an analog synapse, but with a significant speed boost: the new version of the device, which is made up of arrays of protonic programmable resistors, operates a million times faster than previous versions — and are 1,000 times smaller than and operate 10,000 times faster than biological synapses like those found in the human brain.

Getting such technology out of the lab is always a challenge, however, but here the team claims to have made a breakthrough: the new device uses materials compatible with standard silicon fabrication techniques, allowing it to be produced in existing fabs and scale down to nanometer process nodes—meaning, in theory, it can be integrated into commercial processors to accelerate deep-learning workloads.

“We have been able to put these pieces together and demonstrate that these devices are intrinsically very fast and operate with reasonable voltages,” says senior author Jesús A. del Alamo, MIT professor. “This work has really put these devices at a point where they now look really promising for future applications.”

“Once you have an analog processor,” claims lead author Murat Onen, “you will no longer be training networks everyone else is working on. You will be training networks with unprecedented complexities that no one else can afford to, and therefore vastly outperform them.” In other words, this is not a faster car, this is a spacecraft.”

The team’s work has been published in the journal Science under closed-access terms.

Main article image courtesy of Ella Maru Studio and Murat Onen.

Back in March, Porsche announced that it would turn to its Exclusive Manufaktur department to create a one-off 911 inspired by the Pixar character Sally Carrera from the movie cars. That car is now finally going up at auction as part of RM Sotheby’s Monterey auction on August 20.

For quite some time, reports have circulated that Intel is developing its line of graphics cards under the name Intel ARC, intended to challenge industry leaders Nvidia and AMD.

Finally, there is an update on the arrival of the new Intel desktop graphics cards. Instead of releasing the SKUs all at once as is customary, Intel appears to be planning a phased rollout. This time, Intel intends to roll out its range gradually from August 5th to September 29.

Igor Wallossek, a reputable source who could learn specific details about Intel’s internal discussions on the launch, provided the information for the report.

“Intel is said to have now internally decided on a narrower time frame. If they’re going to stick to the current timeframe, the range that’s being placed to me now is between August 5th, 2022, and September 29, 2022 -Igor Wallossek.

We previously discussed that Intel had been entirely lacking in terms of keeping their promises and expectations as the launch date kept getting delayed, even though Intel secretly launched an Intel ARC A380 graphic card mode in China for $153, which was reportedly performing 20% ​​better than AMD’s budgeted model AMD Radeon 6400.

Additionally, Intel is internally producing finished cards that will be quickly made available for reporting to selected media personnel. However, it is anticipated that most of these evaluations will be written for marketing purposes to create hype and keep the audience interested as the launch dates approach.

Igor does, however, anticipate that once the graphics cards are offered for sale to the general public, we will be able to read unbiased reviews that will enable us to determine whether or not the Intel ARC is living up to expectations.

Additionally, Intel made it very clear during a Q&A session with PC Gamer that they will only make an official announcement about Intel ARC cards after they are prepared to ship to customers.

A significant chunk of the community is still undecided about the upcoming lineup because there are now many conflicting opinions, and only time will tell whether Intel will be able to deliver.

Intel ARC Desktop Graphics Cards Lineup Specifications:

What are your thoughts? Do you think Intel can make its position in the graphic card market? Are you planning to buy Intel ARC when it comes out?

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