IEEE Spectrum July, 2009 - 18

tools & toys
IntelliTouch Eos Wireless
US $250 and up
http://www.eoswireless.com

big house,
cheap audio

the eos multiroom sound
system isn't slick, but it won't
stress your budget

F

or several years now I've
had Sonos envy. Several of my
friends own these high-end
multiroom audio systems; when
dinner-party conversation lags, we
pass the handheld controller around
the table to play memorable songs and
reminisce. (Okay, a bit strange, but this
is Silicon Valley.) Unfortunately, Sonos
systems are complicated and costly:
Just the starter pack, with the wireless
controller and boxes to hook up two
rooms, sets you back US $1000, and
that's without speakers.
So when I heard that a company
named IntelliTouch, in San Diego,
would soon offer a low-cost multiroom
audio system called Eos, I was excited.
"Low" is a relative term, of course.
The Eos Wireless starter pack-a base
station, a remote speaker unit, an audio
cable for hooking up other components,
and a remote-lists for $250 but sells
for as low as $150. (The controller is
built into the speaker.) Additional
26

NA * iEEE SpEctrum * july 2009

speakers are about $130 each.
Eos, of course, does not do as
much as Sonos. It doesn't connect
to online music services without a
computer. Nor can it send different
audio to different rooms. It is, however,
unbelievably easy to set up. I put the
base station and four speakers in five
different rooms, and the only hard
thing was finding available outlets.
The sound quality was comparable
to that of most iPod docking systems,
but it was better than most when
I installed one of the speaker units
in the same room as the base station,
for an improved stereo effect. (Each
speaker has 2.1 surround sound and
a subwoofer.) The advertised range is
50 meters; my house isn't quite that big,
but a speaker placed outside, plugged
into a garage outlet, worked fine.
Eos broadcasts in the 2.4-gigahertz
frequency band, right in there with
cordless phones, microwave ovens,
and Wi-Fi. But it uses a proprietary
spread spectrum, frequency-hopping
technology that the company
says prevents interference-and
indeed, I didn't experience any.
The Eos remote controller works
only on a line of sight from the base
station, so to change a song I have

to run downstairs. That makes
Eos more like an iPod dock than
a true multichannel multiroom
system. But the multiroom feature
was a huge boon when my family
didn't want to interrupt its weekend
chores, in and out of the house, for
the Obama inauguration concert.
I repositioned the four speakers
into critical areas, including one
out on the front porch and one in
the backyard. Eos saved that day.
I do have a few quibbles. The power
adapter design is conceptually clever:
It looks like it's built into the speaker,
so you can plug the speaker directly
into the wall, but you can also pop the
adapter out of the speaker, revealing a
cord you can plug into a less accessible
outlet or power strip. Fabulous idea,
but the implementation wasn't so
successful. One of the power supply
slots was jammed shut, so I couldn't
use that speaker on a tabletop; it had
to stay with the wall outlet. Another
speaker had the opposite problem:
The spring door was broken, so
I could use it only with the cord out.
Admittedly, these were press loaner
units that had likely taken some abuse.
Also, there was a slight delay
between turning on a remote speaker
and getting sound out of it. Now, I know
there has to be a delay. But every time
I turned a speaker on, I found that I'd
keep dialing up the volume, thinking
that I wasn't hearing the music because
it was turned down too low. By the
time the signal kicked in, the sound
would be so loud that it was painful.
Would I buy Eos? Probably not as
a multiroom audio system-not until
the remote works without line of sight.
Would I buy Eos if I was shopping for
an iPod dock? Definitely. Its price is
competitive in that market, and being
able to move speakers around or easily
set up an indoor/outdoor sound system
is a great bonus.
-Tekla S. Perry
www.spectrum.ieee.org
http://www.eoswireless.com http://www.spectrum.ieee.org
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum July, 2009
