Meet Google Home Mini and Google Home Max

Meet Google Home Mini and Google Home Max

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At their recent hardware event, Google announced two new additions to their smart speaker agenda, both of which are ready to take on the ever-increasing number of competitors in the field. Say hello to the Google Home Mini and the Google Home Max.

 

The Google Home Mini has the same functionality as the original Google Home, but at a fraction of the size (and cost). With voice command, you can ask Google Assistant to stream music, control your smart home, check your calendar, and search the internet. The Mini is nearly 4 inches in diameter (roughly the size of a hockey puck), with the top portion covered in fabric, which is available in three colors: chalk, charcoal, and coral. The fabric hides the speaker (1.5-inches) and a far-field voice-recognition microphone. The design is pretty simple and sleek (although as a cat-parent, I wonder how much hair that fabric covering will collect over time). The Mini is a direct response (and a direct competitor) to the Amazon Echo Dot, the cheaper, more popular version of Amazon’s flagship Echo smart speaker. Will The Mini overtake Echo Dot as the most popular pint-sized smart speaker? According to some reviews, The Google Home Mini certainly sounds better than the Echo Dot (it boast 360 degree sound with a 40mm driver), but in overall functionality, there isn’t much of a difference between the two. At $49, the Mini is the cheapest smart speaker option currently on the market.

 

The biggest announcement of the day, however, belonged to the introduction of Google Home Max, a premium version of the Google Home smart speaker designed to compete against Apple’s HomePod and Sonos. The Home Max is a stereo speaker that runs Google Assitant and looks quite similar to the Sonos Play:5 speaker. The speaker is designed to intelligently adjust audio depending on a user’s surroundings using AI (or what Google calls “Smart Sound”), similar to what Apple’s HomePod speaker does. The Max has two tweeters and two 4.5-inch woofers and the company has emphasized the speaker’s powerful bass. The Max supports multi-room audio via Chromecast Audio only, but supports many streaming services including Pandora, Spotify, and iHeartRadio. In terms of connectivity, the Home Max supports Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Chromecast. At roughly 12 pounds, this is by far the largest smart speaker on the market, and the priciest as well. The Google Home Max will set you back almost $400, but Google is giving away 12 months free of YouTube Music with every Home Max purchase. The speaker will be available in two colors: chalk and charcoal, and can be displayed both vertically or horizontally via an adjustable silicon base.

 

The real question is: will the Google Home Max sound as good as the company claims? The answer is, most likely, no. Smart speakers don’t have a very good track record when it comes to audio quality. That’s why many smart speaker owners look for alternative ways to playback their music, especially for multi-room. To achieve excellent wireless multi-room, or multi-device set ups, entertainment systems need greater reliability over standard Wi-Fi, more precise synchronization, and multichannel capabilities, which smart speakers like Google Home, and the Echo, lack.

 

The good news: Blackfire Research offers the most synchronous, reliable, and cost effective wireless solution on the market. We call it the Blackfire RED framework, and it can be embedded into premium wireless speakers and voice-activated smart speakers, creating a truly connected home smart entertainment system. Voice service solutions require a high performance, multi-room solution like the Blackfire RED framework, allowing for multiple devices to respond to voice commands simultaneously.

 

Combining individual entertainment systems to work together to create a truly connected smart home is non trivial – but with Blackfire RED, it can be done, and with stunning results. Blackfire RED can be integrated into a broad spectrum of high quality voice service applications, so the Blackfire connected smart home ecosystem has no limits.  

 

Harman Kardon, Pioneer, and Onkyo are leveraging Blackfire’s technology in over 100 new products this year alone. Join the Blackfire Revolution today!

Music Review, Miley Cyrus, “Younger Now”

Music Review, Miley Cyrus, “Younger Now”

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Miley Cyrus is no stranger to playing a persona. She achieved stardom as a pre-teen playing a secret pop star on the widely successful Disney Channel show “Hannah Montana” and went from “Party in the U.S.A.” to appropriating hip-hop culture for profit in the blink of an eye. Now, Miley seriously wants you to forget the past few years of her career and the whole 2013 VMAs debacle because she is “so not that.” On her latest album, “Younger Now,” Miley Cyrus denounces her “Bangerz” era and finds peace with herself in the aftermath of a turbulent half decade. But what happens when the artist lifts the persona but is left with something so bland and uninspiring, you almost miss the cringe-worthy twerking? Do we then acknowledge that the drama of a public meltdown (and, again, appropriating another culture for years before chucking it like leftover sushi when it no longer generates media buzz or revenue) is the art that sells tickets to a world tour – not the music itself? Although Miley Cyrus claims to have found herself personally, musically, she’s got a long road ahead of her. Miley Cyrus has a powerful voice, both literally and figuratively (her philanthropic efforts are incredible for someone her age, and she’s even founded her own organization to fight injustice facing homeless youth and LGBTQ youth called The Happy Hippie Foundation), but that voice seems lost in her transition from persona. The opening title track begins with “Feels like I just woke up.” After listening to the album in it’s entirety, full of lazy lyrics and flat musical production, we are left wondering if she’s even bothered to get out of bed yet.

Amazon Unveils Next Gen Echo Products

Amazon Unveils Next Gen Echo Products

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Recently, Amazon unveiled a plethora of new Echo products. From a true smart home hub to buttons that will come in handy during your next family game night, here is everything that Amazon unveiled at their September 27th event, and what it means for the future of the smart home.

 

Amazon has officially retired their original Echo smart speaker (RIP: 2014-2017) and replaced it with a second generation version at $99. The first update to the world’s most popular smart speaker sees a shorter, more compact design and a dedicated bass tweeter. The new Echo will come in six different styles: Charcoal, Heather, and Sandstone fabric or Walnut, Oak, and Silver finish. More importantly, Amazon is promoting an Echo “three-pack” for multi-room audio. The company first announced multi-room audio capabilities back in August, but have only started to heavily promote the feature with the unveiling of the new Echo smart speaker. There hasn’t been much testing yet of the new multi-room feature, so the jury is still out on whether or not Echo provides a synchronous, reliable performance across all devices throughout the home. Unlike Blackfire RED framework enabled smart devices, the Echo can not support multi-channel or low-latency for audio/video lip sync.

 

Additionally, the Echo is now able to make calls throughout North America. Amazon clearly wants the Echo to replace your home phone, and to help push the idea, they’ve also introduced the Echo Connect – a device that is tied to your existing home phone number that allows you to make landline calls through Alexa.

 

Amazon also rolled out the Echo Plus, which looks more like the original Echo than the Echo 2.0. The Echo Plus is the first one specifically designed to be used as a true smart home hub. With it, you can control compatible smart lights, locks, and thermostats. The Echo Plus also uses Zigbee so it’s compatible with more smart devices on the market. The Echo Plus has updated voice-recognition so you can talk to it from further away or in noisy settings, and more advanced speakers. Price-wise, the Echo Plus is comparable to the original Echo, at $149.

 

Amazon also introduced the Echo Spot, a sort of smart alarm clock with a 2.5-inch screen, that can be placed anywhere in the house and can be used for more than just an alarm in the mornings. The Echo Spot can make video calls and can play music through it’s own speakers or connect to external ones via cable or Bluetooth. The Echo Spot can do pretty much anything the Echo can do, but it’s much more compact and it has a screen. But this isn’t the first (and only) Echo product with a screen: Amazon released the Echo Show earlier this year to not overly positive reviews. Now, it seems that they’ve simplified and improved their interface for the Echo Spot. And at $130 for this little gadget, they needed to.

 

Lastly, Amazon introduced Echo Buttons: little discs that connect to your Echo device that you can use to play trivia games with your friends and family (with Alexa as the game-show host). The Echo Buttons light up in cool colors and can be purchased in pairs for $20.

 

So what does this mean for the the smart home of the future? Well, for one thing, Amazon has, once again, positioned itself to be the leader of smart home technology. However, they’ve got some serious competition. Google has also unveiled a whole new suite of products (which we will discuss in a later blog post) that may give Amazon a run for their money. As more and more smart home devices are gaining in popularity, it’ll be interesting to watch how manufacturers choose to align their brands and products with either Alexa or Google Assistant (or perhaps both). The war rages on!

Smart Speakers are for More Than Just Music

Smart Speakers are for More Than Just Music

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As smart speakers like the Amazon Echo and Google Home gain popularity, users are discovering more and more use cases for the technology in their homes. Besides the obvious music listening, what else are smart speaker owners using the technology for? The answer may (not) surprise you.

NPR and Edison Research conducted a study called The Smart Audio Report, which was based on a national online survey of 1,620 American adults. Out of the 800 respondents who said that they owned at least one smart speaker, 709 had an Alexa-enabled device, 160 owned a Google Home, and 69 owned both. No surprises, Amazon is dominating the smart speaker market.

52% of smart speaker owners responded that they keep their primary smart speaker in the living room, with the kitchen being the next highest placement for the smart speaker at 24%. This indicates that the living room is still being used as the main entertainment space, even as technology changes over time. Therefore, CE manufacturers should still view the living room as the epicenter for home entertainment systems. In terms of whole-home entertainment systems such as wireless speakers, the living room serves as great placement for a central hub that can control wireless speakers positioned throughout the house.

If you don’t have a smart speaker yet, you may be asking yourself, what’s the draw? What’s the main reason for even wanting a smart speaker in the first place? According to the report, respondents did not list listening to music as their number one reason for wanting a smart speaker, but rather, the top reason was to have the ability to ask questions or look up information without needing to type it into a phone or computer. This is pretty big news in favor of expanding voice control technology across various entertainment and service devices. Currently, we live in a tactile, app-based technological age: the modern smartphone was designed for viewing, touching, and engaging with a multitude of apps. But that may shift considerably within the next few years. Even though voice AI and voice control are still in their infancy, this study proves that many people want the ability to interact with their devices through their voice.

To the delight of Amazon, surely, 57% of respondents indicated that they have ordered an item through their smart speaker. Considering that retail is the driving force behind smart home innovations like Amazon’s Echo smart speakers powered by their voice AI, Alexa, we consider this a huge win for Amazon.

Overall, the study found that all types of smart speaker users (ranging from “heavy,” “medium,” and “light”), use their voice activated smart speakers regularly to play music, find out the weather, ask general questions, and set timers or alarms. As popularity for smart speakers increase, functionality will as well, and the smart speaker will likely become the central hub for the smart home of the future.

Powered by Blackfire: The Pioneer Elite SC-LX502

Powered by Blackfire: The Pioneer Elite SC-LX502

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At CEDIA 2017, high-end audio manufacturer and Blackfire Research partner, Pioneer, announced the latest models in the brand’s Elite Receiver line. One network A/V receiver in particular has caught a lot of attention, and that’s the SC-LX502.

 

The SC-LX502 is a 7.2 channel Direct Energy HD Network A/V Receiver that supports many high-resolution audio formats and PCM files like FLAC, ALAC, WAV, and AIFF at a max 24-bit/192kHz resolution. The receiver includes several built-in streaming services, such as Spotify, Deezer, Tidal, and Pandora, as well as built-in Google Chromecast technology, with support for both 2.4Ghz and 5GHz Wi-Fi bands.

 

And of course, the SC-LX502 features multi-room audio thanks to FireConnect by Blackfire. FireConnect mirrors network audio and external analog sources connected to a master component (from streaming services to vinyl records) to any Blackfire-compatible speaker (like the Pioneer MRX-3 wireless speaker) in any room, all over standard Wi-Fi. Music selection, speaker grouping, and playback management across the home are built into the Pioneer Remote App for iOS and Android. Now, your favorite music can follow you from room to room.

The SC-LX502 retails for $999 – get yours today!