High up in the Penthouse suite at the Gansevoort hotel in midtown Manhattan, audio pioneer and entrepreneur Tom DeVesto announced the launch of his third audio company, Como Audio, along with the Kickstarter Campaign to fund product development. DeVesto's track record for audio companies has been pretty good with Cambridge Soundworks and Tivoli Audio in his portfolio of previous start-ups.
As for this new project, the prototypes on display looked pretty sweet, and sounded pretty sweet as well: rich, full sound with headroom to spare. Como's product line at this point is comprised of just two products: the Solo, and Duetto. Both are small but powerful tabletop radios. But these are much more than just tabletop radios. Both products serve up a variety of audio tasks, with a design toward ease of use. Or, to quote Tom, "these products are guest room-ready."
Both the Solo and the Duetto can be stand-alone units or can be synchronized throughout your home for multi-room music playback. The Solo boasts High-fidelity sound in an attractive wooden furniture grade finish or in high gloss lacquer white. There are six pre-sets for music sources including the likes of Spotify, FM, internet radio and Bluetooth. You won't have to look up what's playing as an integrated 2.8" color display shows you the artist/song/album meta data and artwork where available. Powering the Solo is a 2-way amplified speaker system with four-layer voice coil, 3" woofer and a 3/4" tweeter. Custom DSP (Digital Signal Processing) and 60 watts of amplification round out the package.
The Solo features dual alarms, internet radio with 20,000 plus stations, Bluetooth with aptX, NFC and DLNA support. It's also is Google Cast and Amazon Dot-ready for integration with your existing mobile devices. It includes four inputs for use with a variety of sources including one optical jack that would mate well with a bedroom TV. A remote control is included, but you can use your cell phone or tablet with a free Como control app for iOS or Android.
The larger Duetto offers similar specs, but with a larger 3.2" display and stereo speakers. The Solo measures 5" high x 9.5" wide and 4.7" deep with an MSRP: $299 and the Duetto is 5.3" high, 5.6" deep and 14.5" wide with an MSRP of $399. The products are currently being offered exclusively through Kickstarter. The company expects to begin shipping the Solo and Duetto to the earliest kickstarter backers this fall.
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