Amazon Alexa Home Theater Unlocks Wireless Surround Sound For Echo Speakers

Amazon has doubled down on its promise of premium audio accessibility by unveiling not only a new lineup of Echo smart speakers but also a major expansion of the Alexa Home Theater feature that turns Amazon Echo speakers into all-in-one surround sound setups. For some, this may be the ideal solution to creating a home theater over more expensive and/or more complex offerings.

With this announcement comes a redesigned Echo Studio and the debut of the Echo Dot Max. For the Studio, engineers shrank the existing package by 40% and settled on a 6-inch spherical design roughly the size of a grapefruit. In order to maintain robust spatial audio performance, the team custom-designed components and optimized the precise orientation of the three full-range drivers.

The Echo Dot Max represents an even more dramatic feat of miniaturization, delivering three times the bass of standard models by incorporating a two-way driver ...