Created in 2003, AwoX is one of Europe's leading manufacturers of connected devices and smart home technologies. After the first 10 years designing and manufacturing consumer electronics products and solutions for other companies, AwoX launched in 2013 its own brand of products: a line of connected, LED lightbulbs as well as Multi-Room Audio speakers. Today, AwoX commercializes its products globally, and its embedded software licenses are in millions of devices such as smartphones, TVs, decoders, tablets and PCs. Headquartered in France, AwoX has subsidiaries in the USA and Singapore, and continues to accelerate its development through innovation and new products. In October 2014, AwoX purchased Cabasse and initiated an expansion process, reinforcing the brand's strong heritage in the home audio and hi-fi markets, but also expanding its product range with new bold, modern designs, targeting the broader home, multiroom, wireless audio, and even custom-install applications.
At the time when AwoX acquired Cabasse, a new brand emerged from France to become a leading global luxury audio brand - Devialet. And it wouldn't be surprising to think that this latest product from Cabasse was inspired by the unique design of the Devialet Phantom, if it wasn't for the fact that Cabasse actually had already introduced its own "spherical" speaker design in 2005, with a 4-way coaxial spheric loudspeaker called La Sphère (The Sphere), which also leverages the principles of Cabasse Spatially Coherent Source technology and is today one of the brand's references.
On the other hand, there's no doubt that the Devialet Phantom's visibility has motivated Cabasse to follow-up with a more down-to-earth approach that also acknowledges the fact that the home speaker market has dramatically changed with the arrival of voice-activated smart speakers – an area that AwoX/Cabasse knows very well.
The new Cabasse Pearl Wireless Active Speaker is the result of three years of R&D efforts. As Cabasse describes, "aiming to create an active high-definition connected speaker that concentrates all the expertise and technology of the mythical Sphere in a compact active speaker in a round format. With its refined & powerful design, ultra-pure acoustics faithful to brand signature sound, and perfect restitution of music without any alteration, coloring or distortion; The Pearl has that “je ne sais quoi” that appeals to the most demanding music lovers looking to acquire a compact and wireless speaker without compromising on acoustic quality!"
Faithful to brand design in its spherical shape, ideal for spatial coherence, The Pearl combines noble materials, carbon membranes, aluminum dissipator and drivers, a reinforced double shell and magnetic metal grille with the Cabasse logo, and a spherical cabinet with no less than 6 layers of lacquer to obtain the best finish, available as metallic black and pure chromium rings, or pearl white with silver rings.
As a pioneer in coaxial designs and the inventor of three-way coaxial technology (Georges Cabasse, 1993), the company has succeeded in creating a more compact triaxial loudspeaker (bass, mids, and a new coaxial tweeter with carbon and neodymium), combined with power handling, wide and smooth frequency response - 14 Hz to 27kHz is rated - "without any directivity, coloring or distortion making it possible to free music from technical constraints," as the company describes. The brand new 25cm (10") woofer allows for a linear excursion of more than 30mm (1.18"), offering an exceptional level of rich bass. And for a perfect and fully immersive sound, Cabasse engineers equipped The Pearl with an automatic calibration system (CRCS) that takes full advantage of the integrated microphone and Cabasse patented technology (equivalent to that of the Sphere).
It is possible to pair two Pearls and create a stereo system with two speakers through a simple Wi-Fi connection, and without an additional box or hub, making it possible to listen to digital audio sources. It is also possible to listen to TV, a CD player, or even a phono stage for listening to vinyl through the integrated optical and analog inputs. Otherwise, The Pearl is a modern wireless speaker system that leverages Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity, and allows users to stream any source from smartphones, tablets, computers or media servers. The system integrates seamlessly within the Cabasse StreamCONTROL multi-room system and supports all flavors of audio files from MP3 and AAC to AIFF, FLAC, ALAC, and high-resolution audio files, whether they are stored on hard disks or computers, Internet radio or online streaming music services (Spotify, Qobuz, Napster, Deezer, Tidal). As a true smart speaker, The Pearl is compatible with the Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa voice assistants and allows future updates for further services.
For simplified use, The Pearl is also equipped with a connected controller with a clean and ergonomic design, while the Bluetooth handheld remote control allows easy control of the most common features, and custom programming is available through a dedicated app.
The new Cabasse The Pearl will be demonstrated at CES 2019 and is available for now in Europe with an MSRP of 2,790 Euros.
www.cabasse.com
