Monthly Archives: March 2017

Multi-room

Urbanears Baggen and Stammen

Leave a comment

Baggen Stammen

The Stockholm based headphone company is entering the multi-room speaker market with the two colorful speakers Stammen and Baggen. Depending on the color they can be a design piece in your home or a discrete sound system.

Both speakers handle Spotify Connect, AirPlay, Chromecast, Bluetooth, 3.5mm and aux input. Baggen is the bigger one with two 2.5˝ full-range drivers and one 5.25˝ woofer. It costs $450. Stammen is smaller one with two 3/4˝ neodymium dome tweeters and one 4˝ woofer. and costs $350. They both have 3 Class-D amplifiers.

Urbanears Connected app for iOS and android lets you flip through presets, browse internet radio stations, manage multi-room settings and tweak the equalizer.

You can combine up to 5 devices in a multi-room setup. Playing different music or combined in multi mode, which is Urbanears name for party mode.

Urbanears combination of design, good sound and support for both Spotify Connect and AirPlay makes them an interesting newcomer in the market.

Multi-room

Heos new soundbar and sub

Leave a comment

heos soundbar

The soundbar battle of multiroom system continues and Denons Heos line now includes a new soundbar named Heos Bar and a new stand alone subwoofer named Heos Subwoofer.

Heos already has a package called Heos HomeCinema, with a soundbar and a wireless sub but the two new products are more powerful and aimed directly at Sonos equal products.

So the Heos options are quite nice. Pay $599 for Heos HomeCinema and get good home cinema sound or more than double that and get even better sound with the new Heos Bar and Subwoofer.

Heos Bar

Heos Bar has four HDMI 2.0a p/HDCP 2.2 inputs, HDMI output with ARC, compatible with 4K HDR UHD televisions and sources like Blu-ray players and PS4 Pro. It supports HD audio formats like Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio as well as the older formats Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus and DTS. It supports Bluetooth. Optical digital input and analog inputs are also included. So it can pretty much chew anything you throw at it. The price will be $849.

Heos Subwoofer

gallery_heos_sub_01Heos Subwoofer works with all of the Heos speaker lines and not just the Bar. It has two 5-1/4inch (13.5 cm) drives with Class D amps. The price will be $599.

Compared with Sonos

Heos Bar has support for all modern inputs and sound formats that Sonos does not have, with Sonos single optical input. So considering Heos Bar is a smart move, if you are not already invested in the Sonos ecosystem.

Multi-room

Sonos PLAYBASE

Leave a comment

playbase

Sonos expands its home theater offering with the new PLAYBASE that is meant to be placed below a TV as compared to the PLAYBAR that is meant to be placed on the wall below a TV or in front of its stand. It has the same functionality as its older sibling. Which includes the ability to be paired to a SUB and a pair of Play:1s to get real 5.1 home theater audio. It can play music on its own through the Sonos app and connects to a tv with optical input.

A difference is that it incorporates a woofer along with nine other speaker drivers. So Ten amplified speaker drivers in total. Six mid-range, three tweeters and one woofer. It has one ethernet port. PLAYBAR has two.

PLAYBASE securely supports TVs on top of it up to 77 lbs (35 kg).

Both PLAYBASE and PLAYBAR supports Speech Enhancement and Night Sound for optimal listening without disturbing the sleeping part of the family.

PLAYBASE will cost 699$ and be available in stores in April 2017.