Soundbar design from start to finish

Dafydd from Hacker Camp Shenzhen vol 2 works at TI and wrote this app note:

The future of consumer home audio has shifted. The priority has moved from having speakers and wires all over the living room to a single, intelligent product capable of emulating the audio experience of other multi-speaker installations. This is normally referred to as a speakerbar or its aftermarket term, a soundbar.

This article is intended to help you get started in designing your own soundbar/active speaker dock by discussing the necessary requirements in putting together the specification list. Future articles will discuss the subsequent steps, including converting a marketing specification into a block diagram, converting the block diagram into a list of devices, suggestions for layout, and software architectures.