Let’s say this right up front. This is a rumor we are starting. We don’t know anything you don’t, we just like to guess.
What will the 2019 Amazon fall new product announcement include for the Amazon Echo speaker lineup?
If today’s announcement about Amazon Music HD is a clue, I think we’re in for quite a musical holiday courtesy of our friends in Seattle.
According to today’s announcement, Amazon says it has a catalog of over 50 million songs with what it calls CD resolution and millions more that are even higher quality of 44.1kHz and up to 192.kHz. Basically lossless sound quality. What does this mean? If you have the ears for it you’ll hear things in your music your ears have been missing for a while, even if you have high quality headphones. All this for it’s new Amazon Music HD service which will sell for $14.99 a month or $12.99 a month for Prime members. If you already have a paid subscription to Amazon music you can get it for just $5 more per month.
The challenge is none of your current Echos can really take advantage of this new service. You’ll still hear the music but you’ll be missing much of the nuance that this type of stream offers. You could stream through a high fi system like Denon or some of Amazon’s other partners in this launch. But may be you want to have a simpler set up like two echos and a sub.
It may also mean that Amazon is getting ready to tee-up a few new speakers in it’s Echo line up.
Let’s speculate and build a wish list of an Echo speaker line up that would benefit from this new streaming service.
What would this new Echo line up look like? Let’s speculate.
The satellites. An Echo with a 3-4” mid-woofer in an Apple HomePod sized package with multiple tweeters. Maybe one with stereo directionally placed tweeters with a mono mid-bass configuration.
Or it could have 3 speakers; a 4” woofer, 2” mid and multiple tweeters.
The sub. Imagine a kicked up a notch Amazon Echo Sub where you have more control over the cross-over point and the volume. And speaking of volume, a little more umph.
And no matter what the configuration it would likely have a higher quality DAC to do justice to the incoming digital signal.
All this is of course speculation. It could be Amazon will simply work with it’s partners to create the hardware to deliver on their new music streaming service. It could also be that this is where Amazon steals the show from everyone by not only delivering a higher quality audio stream, but the affordable hardware to go with it.
Maybe this is the moment where high quality music makes its way back into homes around the world. People might even put down their phones and start really listening to music again. I can dream, right?
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