808 Audio Launches Alexa Voice Service Speaker with Multi-Room Capabilities

808 Audio, a Voxx International brand, announced availability of its new XL-V speaker featuring Alexa capabilities. Signaling that smart speakers don't necessarily need to come from the voice assistant own brands, such as Amazon, 808 Audio's new XL-V speaker is in fact quite similar to the original Amazon Echo, with a different speaker design and driver arrangement, in a metal packaging that the company says delivers improved quality audio.

DTS, now a wholly owned subsidiary of Xperi, announced the launch of the first DTS Play-Fi-enabled wireless speakers with Amazon Alexa Voice Service (AVS) and Alexa Connected Speaker APIs support. The Phorus PS10 wireless speaker ($249 MSRP) will ship in late September/early October, followed by the Onkyo Smart Speaker P3 and Pioneer Elite Smart Speaker F4. Additionally, DTS Play-Fi users will be able to enjoy their “My Music” libraries via the Amazon Music app across their DTS Play-Fi wireless multi-room music systems, regardless of brand.

At the IFA 2017 consumer electronics show in Berlin, Libre Wireless Technologies announced their LibreSync wireless mic-to-cloud voice and media streaming platform solutions will work with Amazon Alexa voice service, as well as support the newly announced Alexa Connected Speaker APIs. With the integration of Alexa and the Alexa Connected Speaker APIs, Libre enables consumer brands and ODM’s to easily incorporate and leverage Alexa voice service and multiroom audio control via Alexa.

Amazon announced an all-new Alexa feature that allows users to control and synchronize music streaming across multiple Amazon Echo devices in the home. Not only target music to a specific Amazon device or a group of devices - such as the Dot, Echo Show, and regular Echo speaker - but also reach third-party AVS devices. New Alexa Developer Tools to extend the ability to control multi-room music on other connected audio systems using voice commands will be available in 2018.