Harman Kardon released what may be the slimmest floorstanding stereo speakers we've ever seen, and despite their lightweight bezels, the wireless speakers are packed with powerful audio features that could make them the perfect addition to your home theater setup. movie at home. The Harman Kardon Radiance XNUMX Wireless Family Audio System includes the aforementioned speakers, plus a subwoofer and a digital hub that you can connect to your TV. The new speakers feature a rather impressive design, measuring XNUMX meters and just XNUMXmm wide and XNUMXmm deep. Much of the technology is packed into its circular bases, which hold the system's wireless components and digital amplifiers.
Skinny minnies
As a general rule of thumb, the bigger the speaker, the louder it will sound. By going with a long, slim design, though, we hope Harman Kardon has found a way to deliver impressive audio performance without sacrificing beautiful floor space. With each speaker containing twenty-four XNUMX-inch drivers, the company claims they will deliver "superior corner-to-corner sound coverage." So you can expect a pretty extensive soundstage. They also feature the company's Digital Loop Amplifier technology, developed to correct distortion and glitches associated with digital amplification, restoring audio quality. The XNUMX-inch, XNUMXW subwoofer, which also comes in a wireless design, takes over the bass. Consequently, you won't have a lot of cables zigzagging around your living room.
(Image credit: Harman Kardon) The included digital hub comes with an LCD touchscreen, letting you monitor your music playback, or there's a Bluetooth remote if you don't want to get up to adjust the volume. This digital hub can be connected to your TV, which means you can use the Radiance 3,999.99 as a home theater setup, rather than a sound bar or wired multi-channel speaker system. It can also be connected to consoles and other audiovisual devices. Since the system has Wi-Fi connectivity, you can stream your music in high definition via the built-in Chromecast technology or via Apple AirPlay. Chromecast and AirPlay allow for multi-room setups throughout the house, so you can pair the Radiance XNUMX system with other compatible speakers, like the Harman Kardon Citation series. As you may have already guessed, the wireless sound system is going to cost you a pretty penny. Free for purchase from October of the current year, look for a cost of €XNUMX for all this multi-room audio technology. Although the worldwide costs have not yet been announced, they drop to around €XNUMX / AU €XNUMX, oops!
The Harman Kardon Citation range of wireless speakers. (Image credit: Harman Kardon)
Review: the latest in a long list of unusual designs
Harman Kardon is no stranger to experimenting with unusual speaker designs; his Citation series is proof of this. The range includes countertop speakers, a sound bar, a subwoofer and two tower speakers, all available in either gray or black fleece fabric. The tower speakers are the most attractive of the set, resembling elongated pyramids, or perhaps more precisely, the cooling towers of a nuclear power plant. In XNUMX, the company expanded the line with an alarm clock booster speaker as well as a portable smart speaker (the Citation XNUMX), which continued with the series' architectural aesthetic. Unfortunately, the Harman Kardon portable speaker did not live up to our hopes. For starters, the built-in Google Assistant only works when you're connected to Wi-Fi, so you can forget about all the dreams you had of using it to turn on your smart thermostat in the park before you got home. We also found the bass to be a little too punchy, often interfering with other frequencies, though the company has since released a software update that lets you adjust the equalizer settings on the smartphone.
The Harman Kardon Citation XNUMX portable smart speaker (pictured) didn't quite live up to our hopes. (Image credit: Harman) If anything, we were more won over by the Citation Towers, which, as floorstanding speakers, are sure to give a better overview of what the new Radiance XNUMX system is going to look like. Like all heavy stereo speakers, we found that the Citation towers need to be placed comprehensively. They don't have a phobia of being in a corner, but they are much happier in a small open space, say a foot from a back wall at least. This is one thing to keep in mind if you're considering buying the Radiance XNUMX as a space-saving measure, though we're interested to see if the long, slim design is going to have an effect on where you can put the speakers We love the sound of the Citation Towers though, and if the Radiance XNUMX sounds like it, you can expect a well-balanced audio performance with a wide, spacious soundstage. We can't wait to hear them for ourselves.
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