Teenage Engineering's cubelike OD-11 streams music straight from the cloud

(Credit: Matthew Moskovciak/CNET)

LAS VEGAS--Wireless audio at CES 2013 has been almost entirely dominated by the idea of streaming music directly from your smartphone, usually via Bluetooth.

Teenage Engineering's newly announced OD-11 is taking a different approach, which it calls the Cloud Speaker. The cubelike speaker actually borrows its design from Swedish audio engineer Stig Carlsson, whose original OD-11 in 1974 featured the same angled tweeter and woofer that directs sound out the the top of the speaker, rather than a more traditional front-facing design. The idea is to throw the sound into a room, without a defined sweet spot that standard positioning creates.

(Credit: Matthew Moskovciak/CNET) (Credit: Matthew Moskovciak/CNET)

The OD-11 is controlled by the neat pucklike Ortho remote, which can be spun to adjust the volume or pressed to skip tracks. It has a magnetic bottom, so it can be stuck to a fridge or even the speaker cabinet. The remote communicates via low-power Bluetooth 4.0, and Teenage Engineering says it can last for up to two years on a single battery.

(Credit: Matthew Moskovciak/CNET)

The speaker itself has just a few basic controls along the very bottom edge. There's a power button the front, while t... [Read more]





by Matthew Moskovciak via CNET