The Amazon Echo speakers aren’t necessarily renowned for their sound quality, but a new feature enabling greater control over that sound is most welcome.
The company has announced an equaliser for the Amazon Echo range and selection of Alexa enabled smart home entertainment devices like AC receivers and sound bars like the brand new Sonos Beam and the Polk Command Bar.
Users will be able to adjust the bass, midrange and treble via voice commands like “Alexa “Alexa, crank up the bass,” “Alexa, turn up treble,” or “Alexa, set TV mode.”
Amazon is enabling users to set the bands 6 dB above or below the neutral setting. So, it’s possible to say “Alexa, set bass to three on sound bar” in order to make the adjustments, as well as just commands like “increase” and “decrease”.
If users have EQ pre-sets for their devices, Alexa will now enable settings like “night mode” or “movie mode” on selected devices.
Related: Best Amazon Echo speaker
The company is making the equaliser available through the Amazon Voice Services (AVS) SDK. This will enable more developers to build the functionality into their own Alexa-enabled products. The EQ mode is coming to the aforementioned devices today in the United States. It’s likely to roll out in other territories in due course. We’ll keep you posted on that front.
The inclusion on the Sonos Beam adds yet another selling point to the Alexa-enabled sound bar, which is now on sale. Trusted Reviews awarded the speaker a rare perfect 10/10 score in our recent review.
It received praise for the excellent sound, ability to control the TV, the lovely design and the integrated Alexa assistant, which “works like a charm” according to our reviewer Ced Yuen.
He writes: “This soundbar does a bit of everything and does it well. It excels at both music and movie soundtracks. It fits seamlessly into Sonos’ existing network of multiroom speakers, and it has no problem fulfilling its promise of controlling TVs and Amazon Fire TV devices. Integrated Alexa support works as well on the Sonos Beam as it does on Amazon’s own Echo products.”
Add voice-controlled EQ to that list of reasons to buy.
Are you tempted to snap up the Sonos Beam sound bar? Let us know @TrustedReviews on Twitter.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.