British Supplier Roberts Radio Bows ‘R-Line’ Multiroom Speakers, Soundbar

British AV supplier Roberts Radio has been making conventional tabletop radios and portables for 80 years, and has a "royal warrant" to supply products to Queen Elizabeth II, but decided it's now time to rethink the future, executives said at a London briefing. Roberts used the briefing to showcase its radically new R-Line, which is due for launch in early 2016. New R-Line 2.1 radios and speakers can be networked for multiroom listening to different sources, or dotted around the same room to provide a balanced sound field from a single source with no single unit playing too loud, the company said. “We are not chasing the young iPhone market,” said CEO Owen Watters Thursday. “We are going for our existing faithful customers, who are mostly in the ‘middle age to dead’ bracket. They want good sound and easy use. So we are giving them easy networking.” For Roberts, the “benchmark in this area” is Sonos multiroom audio, Watters said. “We are not challenging Sonos. But if we can’t offer something as good as or better than Sonos, there is no point in going into the market.” The “main difference” between R-Line and Sonos is that R-Line will be an “open system,” he said. “It can natively stream radio, including digital radio, in stereo and we are offering portable devices with the option of an extra rechargeable battery pack that clips on the bottom and gives 12 hours play.” Sonos representatives didn’t comment. Some R-Line devices will come with color touch displays, some without, the company said. All can be controlled through iOS or Android mobile apps, it said. Inputs are conventional physical sockets, and also Bluetooth for the tech-savvy, it said. Wi-Fi streaming uses chipsets supplied by Frontier Silicon, which deliver stereo without latency or phase discrepancy by a simple trick, it said. The transmitted stream is always stereo and the speakers have a physical left/right switch that lets the user decide which channel to hear, depending on where the unit is placed, it said. Bluetooth pairing includes a near field communication option, it said. The R-Line range also will include a TV soundbar with built-in subwoofer, the company said. The soundbar will have analog and digital connections, but not HDMI, because “it just costs too much money to join the HDMI party,” Watters said. The R-Line is slated to go on sale in the U.K. first, beginning in April, with prices from 150 to 600 pounds ($228 to $911), with the soundbar at around 400 pounds ($607), the company said. "Currently there are no plans for any distribution in the U.S.," spokeswoman Ale Holland emailed us Monday. "However, that might change with time."