Bang & Olufsen’s wireless speaker family just got a whole lot bigger. At IFA 2015 in Berlin, the company announced the launch of its A6 wireless speaker, and in true Bang & Olufsen style, it is simultaneously eye-catching and ear-catching.
The A6 sits somewhere between the brand’s tote-able A2 speaker (a Digital Trends favorite) and the much larger, saucer-shaped A9. At $1,000, the speaker is decidedly priced at a premium, but for a speaker that is as much art as it is a sound source, we’re not terribly surprised.
So, how does the boomerang-shaped speaker sound? Surprisingly robust! We’ve auditioned the speaker twice now — once when we recorded this video during an extremely crowded and noisy event before the official IFA opening, and again on the IFA show floor, which was just slightly less riddled with din. In both instances, the speaker sliced through the thick caterwauling like a sleek, shiny, samurai sword — a samurai sword with incredibly powerful bass, translucent midrange, and B&O’s typically steely treble.
The source of the A6’s force? Two 60-watt class-D amplifiers driving two 5.5-inch woofers, two 30-watt class-D amps pushing the tweeters, and another 60-watt amplifier supporting a rear-facing full-range driver. That’s 240-watts of carefully DSP-controlled power, folks, and it is impressive.
The A6 is every bit a cutting-edge speaker, with support for Apple AirPlay, Bluetooth Audio Streaming, DLNA, Spotify Connect, Deezer, and TuneIn. It will play Hi-Res FLAC files, too, via either a built-in Wi-Fi connection, or via Ethernet. There’s also an analog line-in jack for nearly another other device, too — we’d probably connect a turntable if it were up to us.
The speaker can sit upright on an surface large enough to support its frame, or it can be mounted on the wall. If a user chooses the later, a switch at the bottom will change the speakers output to both accommodate and utilize the boundary, making it seem as if the entire wall is producing sound. Yes, a wall of sound.
The A6 comes with the light grey cover you see here, but dark grey, dark rose, and dusty blue covers are also available as accessories.
If you get the opportunity to check the A6 out, we suggest you take the time to do so. It’s an incredibly impressive all-in-one sound solution.
Instagram is making its way to yet another screen, and this time, Apple TV is getting a taste of the Reels rabbit hole. The company has launched a dedicated Instagram app for Apple TV, bringing Reels, longer videos, and live shows to the big screen. So, if watching one quick clip on a phone somehow turns into an hour of scrolling, there's now a much larger screen for that.
Instagram brings Reels and more to Apple TV
Audio-Technica, a brand well known for making some of the best studio and professional headphones on the market, has just come out with the ATH-AWX7000, which the company itself claims to be its "finest headphones ever." The new flagship closed-back headphone has debuted at an eye-watering price of $3,799. It combines hand-finished Japanese woodwork with a newly developed 58mm driver.
The earcups are made from Kiso cypress, a prized wood historically used for Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples. Each housing is finished by hand with traditional Echizen lacquer, which brings out the grain and is expected to darken over time. The frame and sliders are finished in a deep navy kachi-iro shade traditionally associated with samurai.
This post is brought to you in paid partnership with Best Buy.
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