Smart Speakers are Apparently the Next Big Thing

AlphaAtlas

[H]ard|Gawd
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Smart Speakers have the "strongest growth momentum among all categories of consumer electronics," according to a recent report by Trendforce. Shipments are expected to reach 62.5 million units in 2018, and 95.25 million units in 2019, which is significantly more than the 27.66 million units that left the shelves in 2017. A previous survey by Strategy Analytics found that about 17% of Americans already use smart speakers, and most of them are made by Amazon. Trendforce's new data seems to confirm this, as they say that Amazon accounts for about 70% of the market. Interestingly, while growth will continue in western markets, a huge chunk of growth is expected to be driven by an explosion in the Chinese smart speaker market, and American tech giants won't necessarily get a piece of the overseas pie.

We anticipate that the Chinese market will experience a reshuffle and enter a period of rapid growth in 2019, when the customers shrug off their conservative attitudes and become more positive about smart speakers... As for international brands, smart speakers produced by Amazon, Apple, and Google are all unavailable in China. Due to the lack of access to the Chinese language in their products, it is difficult to expand their services in China.
 
As long as you cant use a trigger word of your own choosing, then i am passing.
But if i was able to swap out alexa / siri / google with something else, then i might join the band wagon if not for anything else than walk down the street and scream obscenities at my phone.
 
Another nail in the coffin of "great sound"......Those smartcrap speakers while convenient, they contribute to the crap sound production quality of compressed sound and complete lack of dynamics in order to be played back on the vast majority of crap speakers in the market. While unfortunate, its true that proper speakers can not be made cheap and compact at the same time while even better speakers with a full frequency spectrum require even more volume since bass can not come out nicely through "smurf" sized cubes.
 
The sound quality on my Amazon View is just fine for playing streaming music anywhere and everywhere in the house at once. I'm not some sound snob that needs 42.5 surround sound in my house or something ridiculous with tweeters made of elephant ass hair.
 
My wife loves her Echos. Buit she has never cared about sound quality.

She doesn't hate it when I continue to play music on the my much better speakers, so I can tolerate the temporary invasion.
 
My kids screamed at Alexa causing it to change music all the time, and play it at max volume. Its a nogo for me.
 
My wife listens to the Echo and Dot all the time. I can't stand the audio from it. It's good for her, though. When connected to a Bluetooth, it's loud enough but the audio fidelity is still lacking. I haven't hooked it up to the home theater system yet (audio out) to see how it sounds. I have much better options available... Streaming audio just doesn't sound right. The compression makes it tinny almost.
 
As long as you cant use a trigger word of your own choosing, then i am passing.
But if i was able to swap out alexa / siri / google with something else, then i might join the band wagon if not for anything else than walk down the street and scream obscenities at my phone.

I'm pretty sure you can change this on Amazon's smart speaker.
 
If you are considering a smart speaker and cannot/do not wish/spouse will hate the appearance if you build your own, then I highly encourage you to at very least buy from https://mycroft.ai/ . Mycroft is the only "smart speaker" that gives a crap about your privacy, is open source, and can even be run from a local server if you wish it to be. To do otherwise is to flush privacy in your own home down the drain in service of convenience as all these proprietary devices are basically data mining full time.

And yes, Mycroft can allow you to change just about everything including the keyword to trigger it, its name, various voice packs etc...
 
Another nail in the coffin of "great sound"......Those smartcrap speakers while convenient, they contribute to the crap sound production quality of compressed sound and complete lack of dynamics in order to be played back on the vast majority of crap speakers in the market. While unfortunate, its true that proper speakers can not be made cheap and compact at the same time while even better speakers with a full frequency spectrum require even more volume since bass can not come out nicely through "smurf" sized cubes.

Eh, why are you trying to use a smart speaker for an entertainment system, anyway? These things aren't intended on playing your music in high fidelity. They're the mouths of virtual assistants. While one CAN play music, it's never intended to be what you're trying to make it be, so of course it's lousy for what you're trying to use it for. >.>
 
Bet the Chinese govt is almost foaming at the mouth in anticipation of being able to listen in on every good Citizen's household conversations.
 
Eh, why are you trying to use a smart speaker for an entertainment system, anyway? These things aren't intended on playing your music in high fidelity. They're the mouths of virtual assistants. While one CAN play music, it's never intended to be what you're trying to make it be, so of course it's lousy for what you're trying to use it for. >.>

I was not clear enough I guess...You see the problem is not that I want it to reproduce music properly; this can't happen from a purely physics point of view. The problem is that with the widespread use of those, people get accustomed to this level of quality, they ignore anything else and then "better sound" gets lost in the chaos of mainstream mediocrity - hence shitty recordings. In short, they find such devices adequate for listening to music and they become the ones who define what is good sound for the manufacturers. Look what happened to mainstream sound systems and the shops selling them...Very few people buy sound systems anymore and the same is happening with PCs that are getting replaced by smartphones and tablets.


Indeed,
Actually if a speaker are under 25 kilos,,,, well its not a speaker its just a emitter of "sound"

Hehe - bring on the huge woofers! There is no replacement for displacement!
 
I like my echo dots connected to Bluetoothspeakers, however they do not compare to CDs in my main system with a 12 inch 100lb sub. Bluetooth sucks in general for transient response.
 
The sound quality on my Amazon View is just fine for playing streaming music anywhere and everywhere in the house at once. I'm not some sound snob that needs 42.5 surround sound in my house or something ridiculous with tweeters made of elephant ass hair.
Audiophiles don't listen to surround, they listen to stereo.

If you're listening to .mp3s, these are probably fine. If you listen to something that isn't a crap sound source, it makes a difference.
 
I do like my Sonos 5.1 system (playbar + sub + 2x play 1). It doesn't rival my mono bi-amp system but it's very convenient and has a punchy fun sound.
 
Many people are too dumb to care about quality.
They use smart speakers.
They use bluetooth headphones with their phones that have big notches on screen.
They stream their "music" off youtube or whatever streaming apps.
They watch a movie on their phone, in portrait.
They don't use fullscreen.

I really hope the enthusiast market of anything never dies.
 
The sound quality on my Amazon View is just fine for playing streaming music anywhere and everywhere in the house at once. I'm not some sound snob that needs 42.5 surround sound in my house or something ridiculous with tweeters made of elephant ass hair.
Actually 42.5 surround is the exact opposite of quality. All you ever needed is 2 channels. The garbage x.1 multimedia surround speaker systems were always aimed at consumidiots, who thought 7.1 trumps 5.1.
 
The sound quality on my Amazon View is just fine for playing streaming music anywhere and everywhere in the house at once. I'm not some sound snob that needs 42.5 surround sound in my house or something ridiculous with tweeters made of elephant ass hair.

Show me on the speaker where the audiophile touched you.
 
so.. what your saying is that when i go visit peoples houses i should loudly say..

alexa order me a 5lb bag of Black Kow. thanks
 
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