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Decadent delights of hardware heaven
There can be only One!
Sonos’ new voice
control speaker
Sonos One
Amazon, Apple and Google are all vying
for dominance in the smart speaker space,
but Sonos may have found a strategy that
beats them all. That’s because instead of
pitting its hopes on just one voice assistant,
it’s going to support them all. while
simultaneously concentrating on the thing
it does best – sound quality. At an event in
New York, Sonos finally unveiled what it has
been promising for almost a year – a voice
control platform for playing music. Rather
than building out its own voice control
system, however, the company decided to
partner with the biggest AIs in the business –
including Amazon and Google.
The Sonos One is capable of
supporting multiple voice services and playing music, podcasts, audiobooks, and other sonic content from more than
80 streaming services.
Designed from the ground up to deliver surprisingly rich sound from a speaker of its size, the Sonos One is driven
by two Class-D digital amplifiers, one tweeter, and one mid-woofer. It includes a six-mic array and an adaptive noise
suppression algorithm to focus on the right person and ensure the voice service understands everything clearly. Its
voice capture technology with echo cancelation allows the speaker to still hear you over the music. The volume also
intelligently lowers, or ‘ducks,’ when spoken to for clear speech and the light on the speaker will be illumi nated if the
microphones are active. The light is hardwired to the same circuit that powers the microphone array, so if the light is off,
it means the microphone is off. Sonos One is available in all-white and all-black matte finishes.
“There are many speakers out there that you can control with your voice, but most of them are just devices that make
sounds, not systems designed for delivering great sound easily in any room of your home,” says Giles Martin, sound
experience leader at Sonos. “We essentially blended three separate ecosystems with the ability to start the music
playing with voice, add songs to your playlist from the Sonos app, and play music in a different room from your Spotify
app – it’s so simple to use but took quite a bit of work to create.”
Sonos 01344 887 700, sonos.com
Loud sound
Cabasse’s new high-
performance Murano
Alto column speaker
New from Cabasse is the high-end and high-performance Murano Alto column speaker, that offers a big sound and the
benefits of co-axial drive unit technology in a compact slim-line enclosure.
Murano Alto uses technology trickled down from the Cabasse flagship products, such as the midrange-tweeter
coaxial driver from the Cabasse masterpiece system, l’Océan, and two new designs of honeycomb membrane woofers,
developed from La Sphère.
At the heart of the tri-axial driver from the high-end L’Océan speaker, the BC13
fitted to Murano Alto guarantees excellent reproduction of tones, without unwanted
distortion nor listening fatigue and with an unrivalled soundstage. Specially
engineered for the Murano Alto, the BC13 has a new aluminium wave broadcast
system designed to optimise integrations with Murano’s woofer.
The new 17ND36 woofer drivers were specially designed for the Murano speakers.
To quickly obtain rich and deep bass in a compact speaker, Cabasse engineers
miniaturised the same concept from La Sphère’s 55cm woofer driver. The concave
membrane with a honeycomb structure provides extra rigidity, as well as cushioned
movement, resulting in high performance and excursion without deformation. Guided
by an extra-long voice coil in the 45mm air gap of the powerful motor, weighing in
at 4kg, this membrane bestows Murano Alto a quality of bass that has a purity and
solidity of reproduction not normally associated with speakers at this price.
The 102cm tall, 27cm wide and 37cm deep Murano Alto has a frequency response
of 32Hz – 24kHz and is capable of handling 175 watts of RMS power and 1200 watts
peak. It is available in glossy white, glossy black or glossy mahogany finishes.
Cabasse, cabasse.com
October 2017 | 67