this thing just arrived from the future a future where simplicity style and
stellar sound come in the same box a future where all audio is streamed
wirelessly and where no one can afford to buy an
apartment let alone a house with a dedicated listening space
but as dystopian as that future may be i'm really glad they sent this thing
back because it's actually really really cool nzxt wants to make building a
custom pc easier with their build system just set a budget see how the computer
performs and build takes care of the rest watch to the end of the video to
learn more or click the link below to get your custom pc today
first of all the cell is a beautiful product that's thanks to singh's
co-founder ceo and chief designer chris stringer who worked under joni iv at
apple for over 20 years and was the lead designer on the original iphone the
transparency and reflectiveness give it a distinctly star wars vibe empire not
rebels while the interior curves give it an organic quality that keeps it from
looking too sterile it'll go great with your serif tv and eames lounge chair and
the cell's design language carries forward to the inside as well somehow
they've managed to put all the major components on full display
but still have it look elegant and understated it's got three horizontally
oriented horns each with two dynamic drivers covering the mids and highs and
for bass it's got two six-inch force balanced subwoofers
this is really cool in a traditional subwoofer the cone's
movement causes vibrations in the enclosure that are typically dampened by
adding more mass here the two drivers move like this
which means that their movements cancel each other out
no distortion no vibrations just smooth
clean bass in theory i mean
they did put a hole in one of them for the nub that threads onto your choice of
heavy proprietary stand actually if we look closer at that it's
home to another cool design element the foreskin excuse me i mean the interface
it's a ratcheted rotary encoder that spins freely for volume control and
pulls down with a click for play and pause there's also a usbc port and
that's it there's no speaker wire terminals for
eighteen hundred dollars
well that's because it's not meant to compete with your ls50 metas
instead the cell is a premium wireless speaker that really ought to be compared
to the home pods sonos's and sound bars of the world
but it's also better than those in some very important ways
the idea is that you plonk down your cell or ideally cells anywhere you want
in your space plug them into power and let the app do the rest and i gotta say
sing did it they managed to make the whole experience feel luxurious from the
space age packaging to the gorgeous app animations to the gravitas sound of
their custom sweep
the device emits this noise then uses its three on-board microphones which i'm
told are only on during calibration to measure the room's reflections and
adjust its eq accordingly the goal is to create an even sound field no matter
where in the room you happen to be and that is why cell is shaped the way it is
the rectangular horns have super even dispersion that is at least on the
horizontal plane so it's a design that makes sense as more and more people live
in smaller open concept homes where every space is multi-purpose in the app
you can even aim the sound field around the house whether you're cooking
couching or copying a feel of the soft fabrics available at lttstore.com
and if you have more than one cell which we don't i'm told that two cells can
give you a sound stage that is wider than stereo and if you pony up for three
you'll reach an ethereal level of envelopment where you don't lose the
center channel as you move around the room
but we only have one of them so how did it sound
well in development the team started by putting the cell in an anechoic chamber
and tuning it to have a flat frequency response curve and in my opinion
that's where they should have left it but they didn't
next they tuned it to their own target curve which was described to me as
something that's representative of the experience the team has so in other
words it's a home pod with a lot more bass
like obnoxious levels of bass like if
your apartment doesn't have concrete walls you probably won't be able to turn
this thing up much louder than a level you can talk over without your neighbors
banging on the wall
which is not to say that it's a bad speaker it's actually pretty impressive
for its size the highs are really clear and lifelike and i believe sing when
they say the sub plays down to 30 hertz it's just
not flat to such an extent that it's not even suitable for entire genres of music
metal for example sounds comically bad
but then i mean come on who listens to that crap anyway for cool people like
you who listen to hip hop and edm especially at parties
the cell probably works great for you or i mean you could just change the
sound profile using an eq app right if it was flat once it can be flat again
unfortunately that's a big maybe
right now the singh app which is still exclusive to iOS only shows spotify
connect and airplay 2 as potential wireless sources
no bluetooth even now spotify has a built-in equalizer but
it doesn't work while using connect or airplay
so okay how about your iphone's os level eq
presets well that works if you're listening via apple music but we tested both youtube
music and spotify and they didn't work
don't despair though the cell has a usbc port
remember and it turns out that plugging in both
Android and iOS devices was great for
charging which actually is pretty handy but
that's it neither of them detected it as an external speaker
as for our macbook well it did work
eq and all and you can use the usb-c port to connect old-school devices to it
as well like av receivers and turntables
as long as you're okay with using one or more likely two adapters in the chain a
funny thing though is that despite the lofty and pretentious claims on the
website the cell needs to receive a stereo signal or mono if you're
desperate if you feed it a surround mix say from your blu-ray player for example
it'll only keep two of the channels and you'll just have to guess which two with
all the other data being lost now i'm told that xing is working on
some kind of proprietary HDMI cable that will be able to transcode e-arc output
from your source to usbc but there's no word on when that will be
available how much it will cost or how many people will care
because if you're concerned about the cell's features to that degree
the product probably isn't for you anyway and you certainly wouldn't pay
eighteen hundred dollars for it
the truth is that in a product like this a lot of your money is going toward
industrial design rather than just performance and for people who have
already heavily invested in the aesthetic of their living space the cell
could be just the ticket especially if they continue to invest in more
connectivity options because all it has to do in that case is
sound good enough which it does while being delightful to use and to look at
which it is so if your space and lifestyle not to
mention wallet are conducive to it i'm not
not recommending the cell it's unlike anything else we've ever seen
and hey if singh doesn't sell a million units of these things and ultimately
fades into obscurity well that's great for you because now your one two or
three cell speakers will appear even more alien and wondrous to your guests
which is probably why you bought them just make
sure that your butler handles them with care because apparently acrylic is still
super delicate in the future tough sell
hey got em you know what's not a tough sell our
sponsor thanks to nzxt for sponsoring today's video with nzxt's build system
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years of experience developing high quality pc components let nzxt's highly
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today using the link in the video description
if you guys enjoyed this video watch the lounge update that we just did
where we updated our lounge with a sweet projector setup
it's uh that was a pain in the butt but definitely worth it