Amazon Alexa Home Theater Unlocks Wireless Surround Sound For Echo Speakers
With this announcement comes a redesigned Echo Studio and the debut of the Echo Dot Max. For the Studio, engineers shrank the existing package by 40% and settled on a 6-inch spherical design roughly the size of a grapefruit. In order to maintain robust spatial audio performance, the team custom-designed components and optimized the precise orientation of the three full-range drivers.
The Echo Dot Max represents an even more dramatic feat of miniaturization, delivering three times the bass of standard models by incorporating a two-way driver system for the first time in an entry-level device. What engineers did here was eliminate the internal speaker module and sealing components directly to the housing, effectively doubling the available airspace behind the speaker cone to accommodate a larger driver to boost low-frequency output. According to Richard Little, senior manager for audio hardware technology, the work involved pushing things "to the point where we were going to be breaking physics," ultimately relying on proprietary software algorithms to correct sound imperfections.
Both new speakers feature advanced spatial awareness (thanks to the Omnisense sensor platform along with AI processing), meaning they continuously listen to their environment with the onboard mics and automatically adapt their sound balance to the room's acoustics, thus no need for manual room calibration. Customers simply place the device anywhere they wish for optimal sound and the system takes care of the rest.
Alexa Home Theater is currently being rolled out to all eligible Echo speakers, transforms Amazon's smart speakers into a comprehensive, wireless surround sound solution. Users can now connect up to five Echo speakers, including the new Echo Studio and Echo Dot Max, along with a separate subwoofer. While the setup still requires connectivity to an Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K or 4K Max, the ability to wirelessly connect up to five devices is quite the upgrade from the previous two-device limit.
You can snag both speakers right now:
