Amazon’s new Echo Studio sounds like the future of smart speakers

Amazon has announced the new Echo Studio, the first high-end smart speaker from the company. The Studio was built specifically to provide Echo customers with a way to listen to lossless music through Amazon’s new Amazon Music HD streaming service. It’s also the first smart speaker to support 3D audio, with both Dolby Atmos and Sony’s 360 Reality Audio codecs on board. The Echo Studio is available for preorder starting today, September 25th, for $199, and it will be available later this year.

I had a chance to get an early demo of the Echo Studio ahead of its announcement, and I walked away suitably impressed. The Studio is larger and more imposing than prior Echo speakers (I’d estimate its size to be between the Echo Plus and the Echo Sub), but it’s also significantly better-sounding, with the ability to fill a room with music that’s clear, punchy, and enjoyable to listen to. It’s the kind of thing that should make Sonos worry, especially at the Studio’s price point.

To attain its impressive sound, the Studio has a total of five drivers: three 2-inch midrange speakers, a 1-inch tweeter, and a 5.25-inch woofer. Two of the three midrange speakers fire out of the sides of the cylinder, while the third projects straight up, which is what gives the Echo Studio its ability to “position” sound in a 3D space. The tweeter is aimed forward and the woofer fires down into a cavity to amplify the bass. Pushing these drivers is an amp with a peak output of 330 watts, 100kHz of bandwidth, and a 24-bit DAC.

The whole kit is housed a familiar-looking cylinder. Anyone who has seen one of the later model Echo speakers will recognize this as part of that family. The top of the cylinder has seven microphones to pick up voice commands, the familiar LED ring that lights up blue whenever Alexa is activated, and buttons for volume, mute, and triggering Alexa. While the Echo Studio looks fine to my eyes, it doesn’t exactly exude luxury. The top is very plastic, and the whole thing uses the same plastic that’s found on the $50 Echo Dot. But this is a $200 speaker, not a $20,000 hi-fi system.

The Studio supports “HD” music, which is CD-quality lossless 16-bit 44.1kHz audio, and “Ultra HD,” which steps up to 24-bit and sample rates up to 192kHz. Amazon says its entire library of over 50 million songs is available in HD with the Amazon Music HD plan, and songs available in the Ultra HD format number “in the millions.”

Those microphones on top of the Studio do more than just listen for voice commands; they are also used to dynamically tune the speakers’ output based on the room it’s in, much like how the Apple HomePod and Sonos Move speakers work. Amazon says the Studio will adjust itself in about 10 seconds and continually adjust its sound as music plays.

But the real trick up the Studio’s sleeve is the 3D audio support, which is something you can’t get on other smart speakers or even most other affordable audio systems, in general.

I was able to hear a few tracks in the new format, including “Rocket Man” by Elton John, “Mona Lisa” by Gregory Porter, and “7 Rings” by Ariana Grande. In each song, there were effects and sounds that I didn’t recall hearing on other sound systems, and all of them provided an immersive experience that is noticeably different than a standard stereo system. The vocal presence in the tracks stood out, in particular, but the Studio was able to play the songs without losing any instruments or effects in the mix.

As impressive as the 3D audio experience is, it’s tempered by the fact that there aren’t a lot of songs available in the format yet. Amazon claims that there are currently about 1,000 tracks available in 3D audio on its service, and recording labels and studios are working to master as many songs as they can in the format. But as anyone familiar with various high-end audio formats like DVD Audio and Super Audio CD knows, impressive sound quality doesn’t mean much if the music you want to listen to isn’t available in that special format. Amazon may have the backing of studios and labels at the moment, but given that the pool of customers that can actually experience 3D audio is limited to owners of one smart speaker and a handful of obscure headphones, it’s easy to see the attention and resources of those studios waning in the future.

For its part, Amazon is including 3D audio tracks with its Music HD subscription plan. So if a song is available in 3D audio, it will be available to stream to the Echo Studio. The company will also allow customers to toggle between the 3D audio version and standard stereo if they don’t like the 3D effects on a particular song. Amazon will offer sample playlists of 3D audio songs for free, so customers can try it out before subscribing to the full Music HD service. Tidal is also expected to start supporting 3D audio next year, and it will be available as an option on the Echo Studio when it arrives.

Since the current pool of 3D audio tracks is so limited, most of the time, the Echo Studio plays standard stereo songs. While the sound of these tracks isn’t as impressive as the 3D audio masters, the Studio still punches well above its price class, and it will easily challenge other smart speakers like the Sonos One and Apple HomePod. We will wait to render a final verdict on the sound quality compared to other speakers until we can test the Studio against them in a real-world environment. But based on the time I spent with the Studio, I have a guess of how that comparison is going to shake out, and it won’t be good for Sonos or Apple.

The Studio is also capable of Dolby Atmos home theater surround sound when wirelessly paired to a compatible FireTV device, as that top-firing tweeter allows for positional effects. You can pair two Studios together for a more immersive Atmos experience and add an Echo Sub to the mix. I did not get a demo of these features, however, so I can’t speak to how well the Studio will perform in this environment.

The Studio is also a full-fledged Echo smart speaker with all of the capabilities of the Echo Plus. That includes the built-in smart home Zigbee hub, which lets you pair devices directly to the Echo Studio for smart home control. Like any other Echo speaker, you can use it to get weather reports and manage grocery lists via Alexa (among many other things).

Regardless of whether 3D audio becomes the next big thing in music, the main accomplishment for the Echo Studio is that it provides a great-sounding, high-end speaker option in Amazon’s lineup. The company has steadily improved the sound quality of its devices since the first Echo and Echo Dot came out, but Echo speakers still aren’t known for being great-sounding speakers. The Studio may very well change that. And at its price of under $200, it’s something that most people who are considering an Echo device will be able to afford, which should cause Sonos, Apple, and Google to sit up and listen.

Photography by Dan Seifert / The Verge

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