A L8 entry to wireless music
Bose, the company that trademarked the word Lifestyle, is introducing a new audio streamer for owners of its DVD home entertainment system. The Bose®
Bose, the company that trademarked the word Lifestyle, is introducing a new audio streamer for owners of its DVD home entertainment system.
The Bose® AL8 is a transmitter and receiver kit that can send music 24 metres around the home. You can also add up to seven additional AR1 receivers (the black pyramids with the top lopped off in the picture above).
You’ll need to be the proud owner of a Lifestyle® 38 or 48 hard drive/DVD system in order to use the AL8 wireless kit, because it uses the proprietary Bose® Link connection. And you’ll need to buy a Lifestyle® RoomMate® speaker system for the other room where you want music because the receiver shuns standard RCA hi-fi connections in favour, again, of a proprietary Bose® Link output.
The RoomMate® system (pictured above) is a single unit that looks similar to the lovely Bose® SoundDock™ iPod speaker system, but in black. It comes with a remote control, too – and it’s no ordinary remote… it’s a Personal® (yep, they’ve trademarked ‘Personal’, too) Music Centre.
The Pernsonal® Music Centre has an LCD screen that displays track into, and allows you to access the Bose® uMusic™ feature, a cool bit of software that analyses your music so ‘random’ playlists don’t veer from classical to heavy metal. Smooth.
Rather than using standard Wi-Fi wireless networking, the AL8 system uses – you’ve guessed it – a proprietary system. It’s called Free Field®, and Bose® claim it limits interference from other devices such as DECT phones and Wi-Fi networks, and eliminates the ‘echo effect’ of wireless signal playback in another room – which we’re guessing means that both rooms play the music at precisely the same time.
We’re confirming prices at the moment, but living a Bose® Personal® Lifestyle® is unlikely to be cheap.
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Dan Grabham
Editor-in-Chief 
