Wireless Streaming, Shared Functionality Mark New Polk Releases
Sound United, DEI Holdings’ division encompassing the Polk Audio, Definitive Technology and Boom brands, unveiled the first Polk home audio products developed at DEI’s Global Design Center, which opened last year in Vista, Calif. (CED May 7/12 p1). The center is overseen by DEI Chief Design Officer Michael DiTullo, ex-frog design, Nike and Converse, who told us at the products’ New York launch that the new Polk Heritage series is about changing the look of home audio products from “cold” and “glassy” to “warm and friendly.”
The Heritage series includes the curved Woodbourne wireless speaker system with Airplay and Bluetooth ($699), which has a rose gold finish reminiscent of the iPhone 5s and a mahogany veneer on top. The 180-watt system is positioned both as a standalone music system and as a “soundbar” for a wall-mounted TV, said Stu Lumsden, Polk vice president-audio. It includes Dolby decoders that convert Dolby Digital 5.1 signals to 2.0 channels for playback through the unit’s drive array including two 5 1/4-inch drivers and a pair of 1-inch silk dome tweeters.
The Camden Square portable Bluetooth speaker ($299) was designed to be a “social speaker,” and includes features designed for group play to separate it from other portable Bluetooth speakers on the market, Steve Kahn, program director, told us. The 7-inch square system is roughly 3.75 inches thick. Polk bills it as portable, though there are far more portable Bluetooth speaker systems on the market. The speaker runs for 24 hours on a single charge through its rechargeable battery, he said. The square shape allows it to be placed flat on a table or upright against a wall to shrink the footprint.
On the audio side, speaker drivers are tilted 10 degrees to “get the sound out” as much as possible, Kahn said, and engineers designed the 2-inch drivers to have extra compliance for “lots of throw.” The drivers are controlled electronically via digital signal processing to get the most output possible, he said. The technology in Camden Square is taken from Polk’s I-Sonic entertainment system, he said.
Polk’s DJ Stream iOS smartphone app, a key part of the overall system, will be available for download on iOS phones at the time the speaker ships on Monday. The Android version will follow by a few days, Kahn said. The app enables up to four users to connect to the speaker via Bluetooth and in party mode the four users can add songs from their smartphone to a group playlist that is managed by the app for playback through the speaker, he said. Beyond the four users that can contribute tunes, up to 100 viewers can “join the party” via the app, Kahn said. They can view the song that’s playing, and “vote” for a song via thumbs-up or thumbs-down icons. The four users, called DJs, accumulate points based on votes that are “just for fun” now. In the future Polk plans to give the points value that could be cashed in for skins or gift certificates, Kahn said. The company plans to introduce more Bluetooth speakers that work with DJ Stream in the future, he said.
The Heritage series is aimed at the “Gen X music lover,” DEI President Kevin Duffy told us. He defined the category broadly, ranging from those in their 20s who “want to be in their 30s” to 40-year-olds “who want to be in their 30s.” The products “are not flashy and bold” and instead have a “hipster vibe,” Duffy said.