Frankfurt Auto Show (IAA)
The automated car is a vision to many, but many are working on all aspects of the vehicle, including what to do in the car when you no longer have to drive. One of those companies is Harman Kardon.
Inside more than 50 million automobiles on the road today you will find brands of Harman Kardon such as Infinity, JBL, Lexicon, Mark Levinson, and Revel. Combined with AKG, you’ll also find the technology inside your audiophile home.
Harman Kardon has such an excellent reputation that some of the biggest companies of the day are creating speakers with them. Harman Kardon and Amazon Alexa have combined to create an intelligent speaker with Amazon Alexa Voice Service called Harman Kardon Allure.
Jurjen Amsterdam, Senior Category Manager Home Systems EMEA, talked about pairing Harman Kardon’s refined and powerful audio performance with Alexa’s intuitive voice technology. Allure brings discerning music-lovers a rich premium listening experience, with the ability to ask Alexa to play music, read the news, control a smart home, make purchases from Amazon Prime, and more than 20,000 other skills. Even in noisy environments, proprietary far-field voice technology allows the speaker to hear commands from a far distance.
Amsterdam gave the key features of the Harman Kardon Allure that combine Amazon Alexa Voice Service; Far-field Voice Recognition: Built-in 4-microphone array with advanced noise cancellation technology allows for hands-free voice control from across the room.
360-Degree Sound: Transducers and built-in subwoofer produce 360-degrees of rich and powerful sound that fills up every corner of the room.
360-Degree ambient Lighting: 360-Degree, multi-colored, and responsive lighting in an iconic design to elevate and enhance any decor.
Wireless Bluetooth Streaming: Stream room-filling music wirelessly from your mobile devices via Bluetooth.
“We’re excited, to integrate with Amazon Alexa to deliver a beautiful speaker with astounding audio coupled with all the intelligent features of Alexa,” said Michael Mauser, President, Lifestyle Audio Division at HARMAN. “Research shows the number one use of digital voice services is music streaming and Allure with its premium sound quality, iconic design, and exceptional voice-enabled technology, will produce a spectacular sound experience while delivering on our promise of elevating a connected life through smart technology.”
Harman Kardon Allure with Amazon Alexa ($249.95) will be available for purchase just in time for Christmas.
Harman Kardon’s brand, JBL, has combined with Google Assistant built-in to create JBL LINK, a hands-free voice-activated speaker. JBL Link, users can stream music, ask questions, manage everyday tasks, and easily control smart devices around the home simply by saying “Ok, Google.” You can check traffic, play music with high-definition music streaming with Chromecast built-in all through a simple voice command.
JBL LINK 10 and LINK 20 speakers are designed to be highly portable with 5 and 10 hours of battery life respectively, and the IPX7 waterproof design gives LINK, even more, versatility for enjoyment outdoors. LINK 300 adds to the other speakers and delivers a more powerful sound. Multiple speakers can be easily linked together for a big, bold multi-room listening experience—within reach of any home Wi-Fi network.
The JBL LINK series with the Google Assistant will be available on JBL and select retailers in the UK, Germany, and France starting in the of fall 2017.
Kevin Hague talked about the developers that work for Harman International, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
Harman Kardon uses a variety of partnerships, licenses, and developers to create the software and hardware that go into the creations of the future.
They also have an external software developer kit (SDK) that helps extend the capabilities to all those people that know how to develop software.
Hague spoke of the hackathons that Samsung puts on to find new developers to increase the functionality of artificial intelligence. The Samsung Developer Conference “hackathon” is October 18-19, 2017 in San Francisco, CA.
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