Effective with 3D audio material; wide-ranging functionality; sonically quite dextrous...
... except in the bass - and this tonal disparity makes it sound a bit like two speakers at once
At the launch of its Echo Studio smart speaker, Amazon strongly suggested high-quality audio reproduction had, until now, been beyond the means of all but the wealthiest. And, what’s more, accessing high-quality audio reproduction had, until now, been so bafflingly complicated that even those that could afford it couldn’t work out how to get it.
But this particular assertion just doesn't match up to reality. The world is not short of reasonably priced, high-performance smart speakers, as our guide to the best wireless speakers proves.
Only a short journey along the alphabet from Amazon brings you to Apple, for example. Its range of smart speakers might consist of just one model, but the HomePod is both reasonably-priced and high-performance. And on top of these similarities, both speakers also share a common aesthetic – they each look like a little audio barrel.
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Where the Amazon puts distance between itself and all the other reasonably priced, high-performance smart speakers, though, is in its embrace of ‘3D’ audio. Both Sony (with 360 Reality Audio) and Dolby (with Atmos Music) have been hard at work producing ‘object-based’ audio mixes of some of the world’s more popular music. And while both companies consider their formats to be most applicable to the headphones experience, Amazon’s Echo Studio wants to deliver the width, depth and height of these recordings in the open, too.
Amazon’s contention that there’s been no such thing as simplicity, performance and value in the audio world before now lacks a certain validity. So can it be true that Echo Studio really can go where no comparable smart speaker has ever gone before: upwards as well as outwards?
Design
As already observed, there’s more than a hint of the Apple HomePod about Echo Studio’s chunkily cylindrical shape. At 206mm high by 175mm diameter, they’re both similarly sized, too. Amazon’s acoustic fabric covering may not feel quite as luxurious as Apple’s, but then Echo Studio is £90 less expensive.
The usual Echo family light-ring runs around the top of the Studio - it’s just a bigger diameter than you’re used to. The light-ring, and the equally familiar volume up/down, mic on/off and Alexa action controls, are all set in a concentric circle of plastic. Inside it is more acoustic cloth, covering an upward-firing 51mm midrange driver. This driver is the key to the Studio’s ‘3D’ audio performance, and it’s also the reason you shouldn’t position the speaker anywhere with a close surface above it - it needs some free space to create a sensation of height to its presentation.
Towards the bottom of the barrel there’s a slot-shaped aperture, which means it’s possible to look right through your Amazon Echo Studio. It adds both a boundary surface and some wave dispersal control to the downward-firing 133mm bass driver positioned just above it.
Features
As well as an upward-firing midrange driver and a downward-firing bass driver, Echo Studio features three more drivers. A couple more 51mm midrange items sit towards the top of the cylinder, one firing right and one firing left, and there’s a forward-facing 25mm tweeter. (For our purposes, the ‘front’ of this cylinder is opposite the mains power connection and 3.5mm analogue/mini-optical input at the bottom of its ‘rear’.)
This multi-directional driver layout is also reminiscent of Apple’s HomePod, which has seven tweeters (arranged around the bottom half of its cabinet) and an upward-firing bass driver. Unlike Amazon, though, Apple is aiming for wide dispersal from its upward-firing driver, rather than an out-and-out sensation of height.
The Amazon’s five drivers are powered by Class D amplification. Amazon is being uncharacteristically coy about specific power output - its quoted ‘peak power’ figure of 330 watts means Echo Studio could have a true power rating of anything between 50 watts and, say, 100-ish. And the story is also shadowy where digital-to-analogue conversion is concerned - the Echo Studio is fitted with a 24bit DAC, which is enough to put high-resolution audio on the menu. But though the company hints at it being a 192kHz device, anything above 24bit/48kHz coming into the Studio is downscaled.
And while we’re discussing the muddying of waters, there’s a new Amazon Music tier where all its 3D audio resides: Amazon Music HD. Despite the industry at large having adopted ‘high resolution’ to describe digital audio files of greater than 16bit/44.1kHz yonks ago, Amazon Music has decided to go with ‘ultra high-definition’. Because there’s nothing consumers enjoy more than not quite being certain of what it is they’re buying.
The Alexa app remains one of the better control apps you’ll use, thanks to its stability and ease of navigation. It’s here you’ll first set up your Echo Studio (once it’s positioned, Studio fires off a series of test-tones to calibrate itself to its specific position in your home). The app also allows you to set up a couple of Studios as a stereo pair (something Apple took an eternity to bring to the HomePod) and also to incorporate an Echo subwoofer. Integrating your favourite streaming services is simple, too - Amazon Music, natch, Apple Music, Deezer (which is also getting behind the whole ‘3D audio’ thing), Spotify and TuneIn are among the most high-profile.
The app also allows Echo Studio to function as a home-cinema speaker, thanks to easy wireless connectivity with Amazon’s Fire TV Cube (first or second generation), Fire TV Stick 4K or Fire TV (third generation). With Dolby Atmos and Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtracks supported, Echo Studio looks a far more realistic home-cinema audio proposition than HomePod currently does.
Echo Studio also features the Zigbee smart-home hub, giving voice control to a much wider set of smart-home possibilities than just audio. Voice control is, of course, via Amazon’s Alexa - it’s as well implemented here as in any other Amazon smart speaker, which means it’s inclined to ignore or misunderstand you just often enough to keep you on your toes. Having said that, Apple’s half-witted Siri voice assistant in the HomePod makes Alexa seem like a Nobel prize-winner.
Performance
First things first: it’s difficult to imagine younger listeners being particularly attracted by 3D audio in its current state. For every Ariana Grande, Rihanna or Lady Gaga tune you can hear in 3D, there’s an absolute stack of George Benson, Santana, Aerosmith... even Edgar Winter is available, and it’s been a while since that was a way to woo the youth vote.
That’s a pity, because music that’s been mixed in an object-based process sounds convincingly deep and wide and tall when played by the Echo Studio. Ariana Grande’s '7 Rings' from Amazon Music HD exists on an open and spacious stage, with authentic height and width to the presentation. The voice is locked, front and centre, while the rest of the recording happens in what is, in effect, an audio dome over the speaker. It’s easy to place individual elements in space above and around the speaker - the effect is not as pronounced as when listening to the same song on headphones, but it’s apparent nevertheless.
Switch to a 3D audio rendering of Marvin Gaye’s 'Sexual Healing' from Deezer and it’s a similar story. The recording is absolutely wide-open, the various elements positioned in the audio canopy with real solidity. There’s no doubt the Echo Studio makes good on its claims for 3D audio presentation - now we all just have to wait for our own personal favourite artists to become available in these brave new formats and the whole notion might become a goer.
In the meantime, Amazon suggest you keep your Echo Studio’s ‘stereo spatial enhancement’ setting enabled in the app ‘for the best music experience’. We’d have to respectfully disagree - trying to force an impression of 3D audio from a stereo recording just results in a hazier, less positive sound than when Echo Studio is simply serving up the stereo information. A couple of minutes with Kate Bush’s 'King of the Mountain' confirms it: with ‘stereo spatial enhancement’ off, there’s pleasing focus and coherence to the Studio’s sound. With it on, everything gets cloudier and less certain.
Tonally, the Echo Studio is an uncomfortable combination of pleasantly detailed fidelity (midrange, and vocals in particular), slight reticence (treble sounds) and bug-eyed over-confidence (bass). Bass is important, yes, but it’s not the be-all and end-all - just because you can extract an unlikely amount of low-frequency wallop from a modestly sized cabinet like this one doesn’t mean you should.
The Echo Studio delves commendably deep and hits hard, but its low-frequency reproduction sounds like it’s been grafted on from another speaker. Apple’s HomePod (which is, let’s not forget, more expensive) does a much better job of integrating its bass reproduction into its overall presentation.
This rather disparate tonal character undermines much of the good work the Amazon does with dynamics (both broad and low-level) and detail retrieval - everything above the bass proves quite nimble and manoeuvrable, giving Freakniks’ 'Tell Me Why' real momentum even while the bass attempts to drag its heels. And material that doesn’t give much emphasis to bass (like Ings’ Dog Physics, for example) consequently fares much better. There’s a stack of detail revealed in the close-mic'd vocal, nice textural variation to the picked guitar and a polite level of attack from the top end.
There’s no shortage of drive from the Echo Studio, either, and a winning sensation of excitement. And it makes good on its promise of 3D audio reproduction - now it just has to wait for laboratories, record companies and streaming services to come up with the content in meaningful quantities.
In the meantime, though, this is a pretty good, pretty competitively priced smart speaker. Good, competitively priced smart speakers existed before Amazon Echo Studio. But it does enough to join their ranks.
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This article was originally published by WIRED UK
