Introducing the Aether Cone, the speaker that hears you

I’M in a relationship with a speaker. Ordinary sound systems just play music. This speaker listens to me.

I’M in a relationship with a speaker.

Ordinary sound systems just play music. This speaker listens to me. It chooses what to play based on what it thinks might fit my taste or mood, streaming hard radio news at 7am or dentist-­office soft rock in the afternoon.

When I want to hear Rihanna, I just lean over to the speaker and say, “play Rihanna”. Presto.

My robot DJ is the Aether Cone, an ambitious reimagining of the speaker. It pushes audio gear towards a new frontier that combines stylish hardware, internet streaming and artificial intelligence. Cone still has too many rough edges to be the successor to the iPod. But it does have many of the necessary elements.

As with all new relationships, living with the $US400 Cone speaker can be frustrating. Mine pegged me early as a diehard fan of indie rock after I played a bit too much of The Shins, and I’ve been working to change its mind.

Cone’s circular face and tap — ered back evoke an old-timer gramophone. (It was made by ­former designers and engineers from Apple, Google, Pixar and NASA.) But it does away with many things we associate with traditional speakers, like remote controls and speaker wires.

Instead, Cone streams all of its music over WiFi, selecting from a buffet of music on the streaming service Rdio: a $US10-a-month subscription is required. It also plays podcasts on Stitcher and tracks you can beam directly from Apple devices using AirPlay.

Cone feels intimate because most of your communication is physical — you touch it and talk to it, primarily, rather than controlling it via remote or mobile device. To change what Cone plays, you turn a ring around the edge of its speaker like a dial. To request a specific artist, song or album, press and hold a button in the centre of the speaker and then speak. The hardware is as sleek and button-free as anything unveiled by Steve Jobs.

There is also a free app for ­iPhones that lets you control the Cone, typing in searches for song or artist.

Behind the scenes, Cone is learning about you. If that idea gives you the willies, it’s worth knowing that Cone goes a step further than what we’ve become accustomed to with personalised internet-based music services like Pandora. It takes note when you turn its dial to change songs, but also records context such as the time of day, the volume at which you play a song and even where in your house the speaker sits, based on the strength of the WiFi signal.

The speaker’s audio quality is just OK. Too often, songs cut out for a millisecond or are accompanied by a rumble, as if the speaker had digestive problems, perhaps caused by its shaky WiFi connectivity. Cone doesn’t sound as rich as the similarly sized Play: 1 speaker from Sonos. This may be because the pricier Cone comes with an eight-hour battery so you can move it around while the Sonos speaker must remain plugged in.

Cone cannot do some of the basic things we’ve come to expect from wireless speakers. You can’t stream Bluetooth audio to it like you can with Pill, which means you can’t take it with you. You also cannot make it part of an all-home audio system like Sonos.

And then there’s the challenge of building a relationship with Cone to hear the music you ­actually want. Automated taste recommendations have been around nearly two decades, with notable successes like Amazon’s book suggestions and Netflix’s movie preference engine.

But Cone puts itself way out there by not only suggesting content, but actually choosing what to play.

Cone works best for people who have Rdio accounts. They’ve already provided valuable information about their tastes. It may support other streaming services in the future.

It can’t yet take more open-ended commands such as “play something relaxing” or even “play classical music”. It doesn’t yet incorporate the tastes of two or more people at home who like different stuff, either.

Getting Cone to get you takes time and effort. Its makers say it should figure you out after a few weeks, so I set out to counter-program Cone’s false assumptions.

I started using it several hours a day. On Cone’s iPhone app, I gave favourite “hearts” to Macklemore and Sara Bareilles to nudge it in the right direction. I’d regularly pick up Cone and command, “Play Rihanna”.

One morning last week, I woke up and turned on Cone. It played news headlines from NPR, followed by Beyonce and Jay Z’s Drunk in Love. Finally, Cone got me! Then it played a country song. Clearly, we both need some relationship counselling.