RIVA WAND Arena and Festival Wireless Speaker Preview

RIVA Audio announced the release of their new line of multiroom wireless speakers at the CEDIA Expo show in Dallas, Texas. The new WAND series comes in two sizes, the larger Festival and the smaller Arena.  Both offer a slew of streaming options and support high-resolution audio up to 24-bit/192kHz.

The RIVA Arena comes with six ADX drivers including three unique ADX drivers and three passive radiators designed to deliver 50 watts of power.  It also features a patented 3-channel amplification system with advanced digital signal processing to maximize audio quality. Some unique features of the Arena are the splash resistant housing  and a optional battery pack for $99 extra which has an estimated battery time of 16 hours!

Riva Arena Wireless Speaker

Listening Demo

I got a chance for a private listening demo during the show. For a fairly large room, the smaller Arena had an exceptionally large soundstage for a speaker that’s just 5"x5"x7" and sounded great for its size.

Riva Festival Speaker

The Festival is their 3 way speaker designed to fill the room with hi-fi sound from a compact system. The listening demo for this speaker was quite impressive.  The Riva representative played a drum solo track through Wi-Fi from his phone to the Festival. To illustrate the solid build of the unit, RIVA put a wine glass of water on top of the box.  Throughout the demo the glass stayed in place and the water had minimal vibrations.  A little hokey demonstration, but I have to say they proved their point. The American Beauty Soundtrack filled the room nicely with lots of gongs, drums and symbols.  The lows were remarkably solid and the representative said the unit had been tested with this particular track with frequency ranges down to 38hz. The third track from Stanley Clark exhibited the funk capabilities of the Festival.  This particular track sounded flat compared to the others. I couldn’t say whether it was the recording or the unit itself, but it didn’t sound quite as full as the other samples.

Connectivity and Streaming Options

The speakers come with a home or away Wi-Fi switch depending on whether you want to use your home Wi-Fi or the devices wi-fi.  Two devices can be linked to play in stereo mode and the controls for this are found right in the free app.  Up to 32 separate RIVA speakers can be connected via Wi-Fi with the devices being up to 100 feet away from each other.

Setup seems easy enough  through the RIVA WAND app with supported voice commands and can stream tons of different content from their host apps as well as from your computer or digital reference library.  We really liked all the different connectivity options of the WAND series including Wi-Fi, DLNA, DDMS, Apple AirPlay and Bluetooth. Third party apps also work with both models to stream your music directly to the device without using the app. The WAND series supports Spotify Connect, Pandora, YouTube and most other streaming options and is Google Cast ready.

Both models also come with a 3.5mm analog input and a USB Type A connector for charge out and music playback and the RIVA Festival also comes with an optical input.

All RIVA WAND series products will be available in mid November - Just in time for Christmas!  We'll be getting one in for a full review as well so keep watching for our in depth coverage of the RIVA WAND products soon.

Unless otherwise indicated, this is a preview article for the featured product. A formal review may or may not follow in the future.