Mobile By Russell Holly Feb. 6, 2014 2:28 pm
If you had the foresight and the financial means to make sure all of the speakers in your house were networked and could be controlled by your phone, this isn’t for you. The rest of us, however, could probably use a Beep or three around the house to unify our speakers.
Having audio blasting throughout your entire home is a time honored tradition among people who enjoy music and have a place to play it loudly without consequence. Unless you have a networked audio system in your house, whatever you are listening to is limited to the room you are playing it in without distortion of some kind. Sure you could just listen to music on your phone with a little bluetooth speaker or some kind of portable stereo, but there’s inconveniences associated with those solutions that can’t be overcome. Two former Googlers think they have the answer with Beep, and they probably aren’t wrong.
The Beep adaptors are designed to be interconnected, so you essentially buy one for each set of speakers you have in your house. The Beep app connects them all and plays whatever is on your phone through all of your connected speakers in unison. The adaptors themselves act as volume controls, so you can choose to have one louder than the others or have them all play in unison. The concept is similar to speaker setups we’ve seen from Sonos and Phorus, but unlike both of those solutions the adaptors are the control point for whatever speakers you want to use.
Beep will start selling later this year for $149, but the company has made their adaptors available for $99 on their website for those interested in pre-ordering. Their app plans to allow for local music playback as well as support from as many apps and services as possible, which is usually where things get a little sticky. Sonos and Phorus both struggle with support from Google Music and others on Android, but Beep seems confident that they can make this work and create the best audio experience for a connected home.
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Having audio blasting throughout your entire home is a time honored tradition among people who enjoy music and have a place to play it loudly without consequence. Unless you have a networked audio system in your house, whatever you are listening to is limited to the room you are playing it in without distortion of some kind. Sure you could just listen to music on your phone with a little bluetooth speaker or some kind of portable stereo, but there’s inconveniences associated with those solutions that can’t be overcome. Two former Googlers think they have the answer with Beep, and they probably aren’t wrong.
The Beep adaptors are designed to be interconnected, so you essentially buy one for each set of speakers you have in your house. The Beep app connects them all and plays whatever is on your phone through all of your connected speakers in unison. The adaptors themselves act as volume controls, so you can choose to have one louder than the others or have them all play in unison. The concept is similar to speaker setups we’ve seen from Sonos and Phorus, but unlike both of those solutions the adaptors are the control point for whatever speakers you want to use.
Beep will start selling later this year for $149, but the company has made their adaptors available for $99 on their website for those interested in pre-ordering. Their app plans to allow for local music playback as well as support from as many apps and services as possible, which is usually where things get a little sticky. Sonos and Phorus both struggle with support from Google Music and others on Android, but Beep seems confident that they can make this work and create the best audio experience for a connected home.
More...
