While I'm not sure why US-based BSS Audio named their line of digital signal management products "London Soundweb," I also, ultimately, don't care. There's too much highly esoteric technical information yet to come to waste time pondering the abstract. Moving on.

The 125th AES convention sees the introduction of four new digital signal processing modules in the London Soundweb line: the BLU-800, BLU-320, BLU-160 and BLU-120.

OK, I'll level with you -- most of this jargon is over my head. I know that these products are used for speaker management and other processing besides, and I know that they're networkable via CAT5 and CAT6 cabling (available at your local computer store). But when BSS Starts throwing lines at me like:

"A dedicated and comprehensively featured Room Combine Processing Object abstracts the complexity of room combining applications and greatly reduces programming time for such applications."

. . . my flippin' eyes glaze over. Or how about this one:

"The addition of Dynamic Metering allows efficient troubleshooting of Soundweb London systems through the use of simple signal presence monitoring."

Oh, simple, is it? Don't condescend to me, BSS. I know where you live (London?).

Why can't you release a clear press release that actually explains what the "HiQnet London Architect, v2.00" does, instead of just mentioning that it "provides support for the four new devices"? I could have guessed that much, man.

The idea that "ring topology ensures that if a single connection fails, all bus channels are retained with negligible interruption to audio" makes sense to me, but why you gotta put it that way? Can't you make reference to Christmas lights, or something? I'm dyin' here.

Basically, the only other information I can glean from the BSS press release is that the new modules provide control of up to 256 channels of audio. After that, it's up to you. Good luck.