Cue Acoustics PS1 wireless speakers do audio over DLNA, we go hands-on
Speaker wire is expensive if you buy it at retail, cheap if you just use a spool of electrical cable, but always, always an eyesore. Sure, you can pull it through the drywall, hide it behind some curtains -- or you can just go wireless. That's the option Cue Acoustics will enable with its PS1 bookshelf speakers, shipping this August. They're a high-end pair, each internally amplified and offering a 5-inch downward-firing woofer, 3.5-inch mid, and .75-inch tweeter, covering all the acoustic hotspots with fanfare. More important, though, is that each speaker can run with only one cable: power. Full details after the break.
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To connect these to your wired setup you can run a digital optical or RCA analog signal into one, which will them pump that signal wirelessly to the other using what's called a "proprietary uncompressed digital audio" format. That's nice, but better is going with a completely wireless transmission setup, which can be achieved with either an (optional) external adapter or by simply connecting to them directly using DLNA. Yes, you can pump audio straight from your smartphone, though of course it'll be far from uncompressed in that case. Unfortunately we can't deliver any impressions of how they sound, the crowded gdgt event not making for a very good listening environment. But, what we could make out over the din didn't disappoint.
The PS1 speakers are set to ship in August and, while we couldn't get anyone at Cue to clue us in on a price, we're told they'll be comparable to other high-end bookshelf speakers. So, you know, pricey... and they probably won't play that old copy of Final Fantasy VII you couldn't bear to throw out, either.
