Premium home audio manufacturer and Blackfire Research partner, Harman Kardon, has teamed up with Microsoft to take on Amazon, Google, and Apple in the smart speaker realm. The Harman Kardon Invoke is the newest smart speaker on the market. While Amazon’s Echo line of smart speakers have Alexa as it’s voice assistant, the Invoke’s voice AI is powered by Microsoft’s Cortana, which makes this an excellent smart speaker for Windows lovers. This is the first smart speaker to feature the Cortana voice assistant, which in the past has lived in Microsoft’s Xbox One and Windows 10 PCs.

The beautifully designed Invoke smart speaker is cylindrical in shape, with a narrow top and wide base (107 x 242mm), and comes in either pearl silver or graphite. The Invoke features 360-degree audio with three 45mm woofers, three 13mm dome tweeters, dual-band (2.4GHz/5Ghz) wireless connectivity, Bluetooth, and seven far-field microphones (which can be muted). Through voice commands, you can ask the Cortana powered smart speaker to stream music, set reminders, control paired smart devices, manage your Office 365 and/or Outlook calendar, ask questions, get the news, and make/receive hands-free calls via Skype to mobile phones, landlines and Skype-enabled devices. At the moment, the Invoke only works with three streaming services: Spotify, iHeartRadio, and TuneIn, but Microsoft has promised that Cortana will support Pandora sometime in the future.

And because the Invoke smart speaker is by Harman Kardon, you know the audio will sound great. In fact, according to Digital Trends, the Invoke’s audio performance beat out the Amazon Echo and The Google Home.

For more information on The Invoke, check out the Harman Kardon website, and the Microsoft website. The Harman Kardon Invoke retails for $199.00.

Recently, Amazon unveiled a plethora of new Echo products. From a true smart home hub to buttons that will come in handy during your next family game night, here is everything that Amazon unveiled at their September 27th event, and what it means for the future of the smart home.

Amazon has officially retired their original Echo smart speaker (RIP: 2014-2017) and replaced it with a second generation version at $99. The first update to the world’s most popular smart speaker sees a shorter, more compact design and a dedicated bass tweeter. The new Echo will come in six different styles: Charcoal, Heather, and Sandstone fabric or Walnut, Oak, and Silver finish. More importantly, Amazon is promoting an Echo “three-pack” for multi-room audio. The company first announced multi-room audio capabilities back in August, but have only started to heavily promote the feature with the unveiling of the new Echo smart speaker. There hasn’t been much testing yet of the new multi-room feature, so the jury is still out on whether or not Echo provides a synchronous, reliable performance across all devices throughout the home. Unlike Blackfire RED framework enabled smart devices, the Echo can not support multi-channel or low-latency for audio/video lip sync.

Additionally, the Echo is now able to make calls throughout North America. Amazon clearly wants the Echo to replace your home phone, and to help push the idea, they’ve also introduced the Echo Connect – a device that is tied to your existing home phone number that allows you to make landline calls through Alexa.

Amazon also rolled out the Echo Plus, which looks more like the original Echo than the Echo 2.0. The Echo Plus is the first one specifically designed to be used as a true smart home hub. With it, you can control compatible smart lights, locks, and thermostats. The Echo Plus also uses Zigbee so it’s compatible with more smart devices on the market. The Echo Plus has updated voice-recognition so you can talk to it from further away or in noisy settings, and more advanced speakers. Price-wise, the Echo Plus is comparable to the original Echo, at $149.

Amazon also introduced the Echo Spot, a sort of smart alarm clock with a 2.5-inch screen, that can be placed anywhere in the house and can be used for more than just an alarm in the mornings. The Echo Spot can make video calls and can play music through it’s own speakers or connect to external ones via cable or Bluetooth. The Echo Spot can do pretty much anything the Echo can do, but it’s much more compact and it has a screen. But this isn’t the first (and only) Echo product with a screen: Amazon released the Echo Show earlier this year to not overly positive reviews. Now, it seems that they’ve simplified and improved their interface for the Echo Spot. And at $130 for this little gadget, they needed to.

Lastly, Amazon introduced Echo Buttons: little discs that connect to your Echo device that you can use to play trivia games with your friends and family (with Alexa as the game-show host). The Echo Buttons light up in cool colors and can be purchased in pairs for $20.

So what does this mean for the the smart home of the future? Well, for one thing, Amazon has, once again, positioned itself to be the leader of smart home technology. However, they’ve got some serious competition. Google has also unveiled a whole new suite of products (which we will discuss in a later blog post) that may give Amazon a run for their money. As more and more smart home devices are gaining in popularity, it’ll be interesting to watch how manufacturers choose to align their brands and products with either Alexa or Google Assistant (or perhaps both). The war rages on!

Blackfire Research kicked off 2017 in Viva Las Vegas to participate in the world’s largest, annual consumer electronics trade show, CES. At the start of each year, CES (and roughly 4,000 exhibiting companies) takes over the Las Vegas Strip, showcasing the latest in hi-tech innovations and prototypes for technology of the future. The exhibition floors were abuzz with the soon-to-be year’s hottest trends: unbelievably thin TVs, autonomous vehicles, multi-screen gaming laptops, Virtual Reality headsets, and – in what tech bloggers are dubbing “The Amazon Home Takeover,” – a wide range of smart home appliances, such as toasters, washer & dryer units, refrigerators, security systems, fans, and more, all aided by Amazon’s voice-activated speaker – Alexa.

As exciting and eye-catching as the exhibition floors were, we at Blackfire couldn’t get too distracted, for we were on a mission to present the industry’s best wireless audio solutions for a wide variety of home entertainment systems and applications.

Over the course of four days, Blackfire held meetings at a suite in the luxurious Venetian, with global industry leaders, partners, investors, and old friends, to demonstrate why we are setting the standard for wireless home entertainment. Among those who visited our suite was Arabian Prince, founding member of the rap group NWA, and driving force behind INNOV8 NEXT. As you may recall, this past November, Arabian and Blackfire’s founder and CEO, Ravi Rajapakse, sat together on a panel to discuss innovation in the music industry at the annual Web Summit in Lisbon, Portugal.

This year at CES, Blackfire had plenty to boast, unveiling not one, but three wireless solutions ready for product integration: Blackfire MA – a cost-effective wireless audio solution for smartphones and multiroom music systems; Blackfire MXD – delivering high-resolution multiroom music with native GoogleCast Audio and Spotify Connect support; and Blackfire IXD – the industry’s first low-latency Wi-Fi surround sound solution enabling smart TVs and set top boxes to deliver the ultimate home theater experience. Blackfire IXD also supports multiroom media streaming, transforming the smart TV or set top box into a whole home media center.

In addition to presenting our audio solutions upstairs at the Venetian, we had the opportunity to visit products with Blackfire’s patented streaming technology on display downstairs at the Onkyo/Pioneer booth. The Onkyo SBT-A500 Network Surround Sound Bar System, The Pioneer SC-LX701 Network A/V Receiver, and the Pioneer MRX-3 Wireless Speaker all proudly displayed the Blackfire Logo. CES also revealed a new, Blackfire enabled 6.1-Channel A/V Receiver and Object-Based Surround Sound Bar from luxury consumer audio company, Integra.

At the Harman/Kardon floor in the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino, we caught a glimpse of the wireless HD Audio line, The Omni+ Series, featuring Blackfire’s patented streaming technology. Recently, the Omni 10+ and the Omni 20+ were joined by the Omni Soundbar System, a 2.1 channel soundbar with a wireless subwoofer, powered by Blackfire wireless streaming technology.
So, at the end of a long, but successful conference, the Blackfire Team had plenty to celebrate (over margaritas) before packing up “The Beast” and heading back to San Francisco. Here’s to a great start to 2017!

A newly reissued, deluxe edition of Fleetwood Mac’s 13th studio album, Mirage (1982), features a remastered version of the original, plus 13 live tracks, outtakes, and songs picked up from the cutting room floor. Stevie Nicks has never sounded better, her lyrics of loss and joy, never more poignant, than on this remastered version of “Gypsy.” The band’s high profile, personal turmoil (and subsequent struggle to come together to create this album – an attempt to break the chain of hostility that plagued them) although less apparent in Mirage, still pulses through the album’s veins, almost 35 years later.

Amazon      iTunes 

So Make Sure to Add it to your Black Friday Shopping List

Today marks the official start to the holiday shopping season and everyone is panicking. So many gifts to buy, so little time! Perhaps you’re looking for a fantastic gift for the music lover in your life? Or maybe you are searching for the perfect addition to your own home entertainment system to show off during holiday dinners? Look no further:  as a proud partner of top audio-visual company Pioneer, Blackfire Research is happy to announce that the Pioneer VSX-1131 AV Receiver, powered by Blackfire Research’s “FireConnect,” has been named one of the best AV Receivers for 2016 by Thewirecutter.com and Themasterswitch.com – so make sure to add it to your Black Friday shopping list!

The Pioneer VSX-1131, which features Blackfire’s FireConnent, placed “runner-up” for Thewirecutter.com’s “The Best Receiver” of 2016 award. On their decision to include the VSX-1131 as one of the year’s best AV Receivers, WireCutter expressed that “the VSX-1131 has AirPlay, Bluetooth, Spotify Connect, Dolby Atmos, and integrated Wi-Fi support. It will convert an analog video signal to HDMI, too, so you need to run only a single cable to your TV. It even offers…component-video and phono inputs…[and] features Google Cast for Audio support, which we really like to see.”

As if one wasn’t enough, Themasterswitch.com has ranked the AV Receiver as #10 on their list of “Best A/V Receivers of 2016,” stating that “[t]his is a good, solid all-round system” and that “it’s one of the more reliable units out there…We do like the increased HDMI ports, and we really enjoyed the room correction system, which calibrated the system nicely.”

The Pioneer VSX-1131 AV Receiver “has seven amplifier channels [and] the serious home cineaste can also operate a Dolby Atmos loudspeaker set with its additional ceiling speakers. With 160 watts per channel, the amplifier output meets higher demands, similar to the seven HDMI ports, one of which is located on the front panel. This allows you to quickly connect external players without much hassle. The VSX-1131 supports 4K UltraHD with HDR on every HDMI port, while it can convert Full HD into 4K using its powerful video scalers.” (Pioneer 2016)

The receiver also features “various streaming options [already] installed. With Spotify, Tidal and Deezer, all the payment streaming services are supported…TuneIn adds thousands of web radio stations, while AirPlay, Google Play and Bluetooth provide matching wireless access to every tablet or smart phone. And if you’re planning a multi-room system in the near future, you’ll be happy to know that the VSX-1131 is already compatible with FireConnect and so able to feed all connected sources into a corresponding system.”(Pioneer 2016)

Pioneer explains that Blackfire’s Fireconnect “enables any audio source connected to the receiver—from vinyl to streaming audio—to be sent wirelessly to a compatible speaker placed anywhere in the home.”

“The new Pioneer AV receivers with FireConnect enable the concurrent playback of every audio source connected to the AV receiver via an optional wireless speaker. Conveniently control the multiroom playback with track selection and volume via smart phone and tablet.” (Pioneer 2016)

Congratulations Blackfire Research and our partners over at Pioneer. Let’s keep setting the standard for wireless home entertainment.

You can purchase the Pioneer VSX-1131 on Amazon, Best Buy, or Walmart.