MUSIC.. AudioWizardry
Music today is different.
It’s different because of the way we experience it. It’s more withdrawn,
isolated and singular. Almost all our music resides in our phones, heard
through headphones, once in a while streamed onto a car audio system. Very
different from how it used to be.
A shared community experience, a family
enjoying it together, speakers blaring and a new turntable being demoed to the
whole neighbourhood.
I think of it as a great
loss. Unlike reading, music was always supposed to be about a shared
experience. That’s why these three products may be perfect to bring music back
to its former glory.
Devialet Phantom The
French company claims this to be ‘the best wireless speaker in the world’. This
is a product that is a visual and aural experience.
An over-the-top assault
of all your senses, crammed with space age technology in a chassis that screams
‘outlandishly futuristic’.
With multiple patented
technologies embedded within, this speaker uses 1.2 tonnes of pressure to seal
it hermetically and emits 30 kilos of thrust force to fire the base from the
lateral woofers.
The top-of-theline
version weighs 12 kilos and can produce sub bass at 14Hz all the way to 27kHz
with 4,500 watts and 108 decibels of power. If the jargon and numbers are too
much, let me make this easy.
I played this little
puppy at a jarringly l ud level, threw in the toughest music I own, songs that
can make the best systems attle, and all I got was pure sound with no
distortion. Very rarely am I ever impressed by a sound system, but this really
shook me espite no vibration in the room.
But there piece that will
shake things up and that’s the price. It starts off at about /1,50,000 for the
White version and goes up many moons for the Gold.
Still, this replaces
multiple components, is a self-contained unit needing literally nothing else,
is easy to set up, has its own app, will play anything from any device via
Bluetooth or Wi-Fi (or wired) and can be a killer home cinema set-up.
Bose SoundLink Revolve
This is Bose doing a 360-degree omnidirectional audio device and getting it
right the first time.
Basically you can put
this anywhere in a room and you’ll get the same pure sound irrespective of
where you are. It’s got a brilliant all perforated metal design, can play
without being plugged in for about 12 hours, and for a pretty small little
thing, can handle some serious volume.
But it’s in the
360-degree sound that it really excels. There are no dead spots anywhere
around, which is a very important thing for a portable speaker you’ll be moving
around to various locations.
It’s also
water-resistant, thus ideal for a pool party or picnic. It also has voice
prompts for set-up, memory for pairing with eight devices, stereo-pairing for
two Revolves, multiroom mode and a Bose Connect app.
The Revolve is a very
evolved package in a small, light enclosure at about 19K. Saregama Carvaan By
far the quirkiest device of the lot.
This is a retro package
laden with awesome new tech. A chunky retro old-style radio that still looks
very much at home in a modern home.
The Carvaan pulls off
multiple magic tricks. It’s a device that comes with 5,000 preloaded classic
songs, a Bluetooth speaker, a USB player and an FM Radio. Most songs are from
the ’70s to the ’90s, you can’t choose a track as it’ll play it like a playlist
(but you can skip a track) and it’ll run on battery for about five hours. The
audio quality for such a device is just fine and it did a spiffing job of
playing off a USB stick. The best part of this device is the new discovery of
old songs.
My dad was in nostalgia
mode for the entire time he was in the room and rediscovered songs he loved but
had forgotten. Amazing little gift and an amazing little player for /5,999.
It’s time to change music
and make it a community experience. Isolated music is like having sex with
yourself. You can do it and its not too bad, but its always so much more fun
with someone else.
Rajiv Makhni is managing editor, Technology, NDTV, BR23JUL17
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