Hi Everyone,

So I certainly love a gadget and have to say this is pretty cool, matching one of the oldest HiFi brands in the world with cutting edge Alexa Voice control, basically partnering an Amazon Echo Dot with the new McIntosh RS200 Wireless speaker allowing you to control it via speech, this really does feel like we are finally getting to what was portrayed in Back to the Future all those years ago

It is all run totally wireless other than the mains of course but it was pretty straight forward to setup, even for a dinosaur like me who is all a bit out of touch with all this kinda tech, basically first you setup the McIntosh with the Play-Fi app, then setup the Echo Dot with the Alexa app, then you have to install the Smart Home Play-Fi app within the Alexa app, then do a search and Alexa finds the RS200 and off you go, loads of talky fun

It is definitely a gadget but I have to say it is good fun and personally I would be pretty keen to see this implemented into proper hifi as originally I thought about adding a DOT to my hifi at home for fun but I could only do this via the 3.5mm analogue out of the Dot, unfortunately it hasn’t got a digital out, so this would mean I would be using the DAC in the Dot and considering this is a £50 product you can imagine how rubbish that would sound but this way all the DOT is dong is controlling the RS200 so you don’t lose any of the sound quality.

Certainly a technology to keep an eye on, if you’d like to come in at any time to have a chat with Alexa please feel free as we have this setup on permanent demonstration.

Oh yeah, so how does the RS200 sound? very good to be fair and it means you can get those blue meters in your house without spending a fortune, I’m going to hook a REL T Zero up to it later today which will definitely improve things, it is certainly a versatile piece of kit.

Please find a video below of me playing with the system this morning, look forward to trying some other stuff later.

http://hifilounge.co.uk/mcintosh-rs200-wireless-speaker

Cheers,

Paul.