Patent ID: 8090115

Claim:
A system comprising: a first device, the first device comprising: a speaker of the first device, a unit configured to switch the first device from an audio source master mode to an audio recipient slave mode, a storage unit configured to store speaker information of a second device, a unit configured to form, based on a multichannel audio source signal and on the speaker information stored in the storage unit, an audio signal to be transmitted to the second device when the first device is in the audio source master mode and the second device is in the audio recipient slave mode, wherein at least one channel of the multichannel audio signal is one of a right audio channel, a left audio channel, a center audio channel, a surround left audio channel, a surround right audio channel, or a subwoofer audio channel, a transmitter configured to transmit the formed audio signal to the second device when the first device is in the audio source master mode, wherein the transmitted audio signal includes control information of the second device, a receiver configured to receive an audio signal transmitted from the second device when the first device is in the audio recipient slave mode and the second device is in the audio source master mode, and a reproduction unit configured to reproduce the audio signal transmitted from the second device or using the speaker of the first device when the first device is in the audio recipient slave mode and for reproducing at least one channel of the multichannel audio signal when the first device is in the audio source master mode; and the second device, the second device comprising: a speaker of the second device, a receiver configured to receive the audio signal transmitted from the first device, and a reproduction unit configured to reproduce the audio signal from the first device, based on the control information included in the audio signal, using the speaker of the second device when the second device is in the audio recipient slave mode and to reproduce an audio signal of the second device, the audio signal of the second device being different from the audio signal transmitted from the first device, using the speaker of the second device when the second device is in either a stand-alone mode or the audio source master mode.