In its packed booth, Bose Corp. showed off its custom-friendly chops big time at CEDIA 2017 in San Diego. First, the company highlighted its Bose Lifestyle 600 in-wall system.
“This is a system designed exclusively for the custom integration market. It complements our Lifestyle console that was launched last year and has all the benefits and features that our integrators have been asking for,” says Adrian Eiben, business unit manager of Bose Custom Solutions Group.
Among the key features on the console are:
- 4K passthrough
- HDCP 2.2
- Built-in amplification
- 6 HDMI inputs
The console powers Bose’s new AdaptIQ Series 3 in-wall speakers. The speakers are a variant of Bose’s popular compact, direct-reflecting Jewel Cube technology with neodymium magnets. Acoustimass 300 bass module is one more element of the Bose Lifestyle 600 system.
Secondly, Bose touted its Works With Bose (Bose.com/WorksWithBose) partner program that engages the company with many other channel vendors, including AMX, Control4, Crestron, Elan, Key Digital, RTI and URC in the control space. Amazon Alexa is another key partner, along with Samsung’s SmartThings.
“The Works with Bose program highlights a lot of our software partnerships with companies that we really want to work more deeply with,” says Eiben. “The program covers our control partners, our music service partners (including Pandora, Spotify, TuneIn, Sirius/XM, Dezer and IHeartRadio), and our running apps that enable us to do health and physical wellness tracking with our headphones.”
He continues, “The update to our app is really a big one this year. Along with all of our SoundTouch capabilities, which have always been able to be controlled by each of these partners, we will now have audio and video control built in to our API and our third-party drivers. This will allow our dealers to control everything from our all-in-one systems to our home theater systems.”
That means everything from the SoundTouch 300 to the premium Lifestyle 650 system.
Lastly, the company demo’ed its integration with Amazon Alexa.
“Within the year, we will have basic Bose skillsets for Amazon Alexa that will allow Alexa to control our entire SoundTouch ecosystem. You will be able to play pre-sets in certain rooms, group certain rooms, and have basic volume control,” notes Eiben.
