What’s happened? If you already have Echo speakers and dream of a home theater setup without the cable chaos, Amazon has you covered. The company is rolling out its Alexa Home Theater experience for Echo speakers, turning them into a proper surround-sound system for your TV.
Thanks to built-in spatial awareness, you can place the speakers wherever they blend best with your space, and Alexa automatically balances the sound for you.
According to Engadget, the Alexa Home Theater is now broadly available.
Chris Hall / Digital Trends
This is important because: This upgrade turns Amazon Echo speakers from solo smart speakers into a multi-device surround system built for rooms.
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It removes one of the biggest hurdles of surround audio, that is, speaker placement and wiring.
Now, you can place the speakers where they look best, and Alexa will adjust the audio automatically using spatial awareness.
The number of supported speakers has more than doubled, creating a fuller surround-sound effect.
Why should I care? If you already use Echo speakers, this is an easy way to level up your TV and movie nights.
Instead of investing in a separate soundbar system, Echo users can build a theater setup using Amazon’s ecosystem.
Even if you don’t have five speakers right now, knowing the system scales means you can start with a couple of speakers and expand as you go.
It keeps setup simple with fewer cables, less technical hassle, and more plug-and-play.
OK, what’s next? Amazon also introduced two upgraded speakers alongside the home-theater update:
The new Echo Studio, which packs immersive spatial audio into a chassis 40% smaller than the original.
The first-ever Echo Dot Max offers three times the bass of previous Dot models.
Both models include spatial-awareness tuning so they can adapt to your room acoustics automatically for better, more balanced audio.