Soundolier duo Wireless Lamp Speaker

We had seen this product in some recent press releases, but the concept caught our imagination, so I paid Soundolier's Duo lamp-wireless speaker a visit.

Soundolier is a division of Mitek Corporation and their Duo combines two essential needs of any living room-based home theater: sund and lighting. The Soundolier Duo solves two of the most common surround speaker installation challenges:

• Wiring - Most existing homes have no in-wall prewiring for surround speakers, requiring home theater lovers to either pay for expensive wire runs, live with unsightly exposed wires - or do without;
• Aesthetics - Conventional surround speakers can be unsightly, competing with decorations when mounted on rear walls or, when placed on stands, with end tables or reading lamps.

The Duo's unique, creative design makes it a "stand out" product among it's peers, though currently, it's sound quality makes it a product more apt to fit in well with an office environment. Bandwidth is capped at 16kHz and the quality we heard at the show was far from sounding uncompressed, though the system was only 2 feet from the tranmitter. We assumed any shortfalls in audio were likely due to the form factor and limited speaker volume rather than the transmitter/receiver system.

"Because the Duo utilizes wireless audio, it can be placed anywhere in the home," said Johnathan Ivey, Director of Wireless Technologies for Soundolier. "According to a recent CEA survey, wireless speakers are second only to 'television' as the component home theater lovers are most likely to add to their home theater. A pair of Soundolier Duo speaker lamps seamlessly blends into the decor and provides the level of sound quality one expects."

The sleek black base and stem (alternate colors will soon be available) opens to a visually-balanced housing at the top of the lamp containing both a 5-1/4", full range speaker and dimmer-controlled lighting fixture. Using a patent-pending, pole piece mounted dispersion design, the Soundolier Duo evenly disperses sound in a 360 degree arc, virtually eliminating localization.

Thanks to its advanced 2.4GHz digital technology, the Soundolier Duo's wireless reception does not suffer from the interference problems found with 900MHz and early 2.4GHz systems. Its wireless transmitter provides 200-foot line-of-sight transmission, making it suitable for waiting rooms, offices, salons or other places where soft lighting and omnidirectional sound are desired. What's more, signal communication can be switched among four difference channels to avoid interference with WiFi computer networks, cordless phones, or wireless appliances.

The Soundolier Duo has multiple convenience features to provide flexibility and added value. Use the 3.5mm line output jack at the base of the lamp to connect a subwoofer or a second transmitter to extend the reception range; an additional 3.5mm stereo line input jack, also on the base, allows for quick connection to local sources such as MP3 players, satellite radio receivers, or game systems. Each Duo can be individually set to 'left' or 'right' when used as 2-channel pairs, or 'mix' to obtain stereo sound for locations where just one speaker is preferred.

For more information, visit http://www.speakerlamp.com.