Home speakers are now out-the-box
HOME speakers used to be big and blocky, more or less an eyesore. Hanging on the wall or sitting in the corner of a room, they were accompanied by a tethered music player and a hodgepodge of vinyl, eight-tracks, cassettes and CDs.
Over the past few decades music formats have gotten smaller. The days of having a large CD collection or an iPod with 10 000 MP3s are just about history thanks to streaming services such as Spotify, Tidal and Apple Music.
Audio brands are catching up. The latest home speakers by Sony, Bose, Master & Dynamic, Samsung, Bang & Olufsen, and Libratone have WiFi and Bluetooth capabilities built in, plus smartphone apps that control your music from anywhere in the house.
It wasn’t until streaming became king that audio brands switched their attention from wired models to wireless speakers for the home. Home speakers have been redesigned inside and out; they’re more polished, compact and feature-rich, many at accessible prices.
Audio brands have looked to the architecture and design world for inspiration. Architect David Adjaye, lead designer of the new National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, crafted Master & Dynamic’s new wireless speaker from sculptural concrete. Bang & Olufsen collaborated with renowned Danish textile company Kvadrat to design its speaker’s swappable fabric covers.
Aesthetics are far from an afterthought, but the tech underneath is the real story.
While at home, a WiFi network lets you connect your smartphone, streaming app and voice-controlled assistant to your speaker. Once you’re connected, your smartphone – along with the Amazon Echo or Google Home virtual assistants, if you have one – can control the speaker.
If WiFi isn’t around, some speakers allow you to use Bluetooth as well.
Because of those advantages, some audio companies predict that WiFi will take over Bluetooth, at least in the home. For its new Playbase speaker system, US brand Sonos has dropped Bluetooth for a WiFi-only experience that is designed for both TV audio and music streaming at home. – Washington Post