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Raumfeld does hi-res streaming in true stereo

German company Raumfeld is bring its multi-room streaming system to the US with its differentiating features being true discrete stereo playback and hi-res compatibility.

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Ty Pendlebury Editor
Ty Pendlebury is a journalism graduate of RMIT Melbourne, and has worked at CNET since 2006. He lives in New York City where he writes about streaming and home audio.
Expertise Ty has worked for radio, print, and online publications, and has been writing about home entertainment since 2004. He majored in Cinema Studies when studying at RMIT. He is an avid record collector and streaming music enthusiast. Credentials
  • Ty was nominated for Best New Journalist at the Australian IT Journalism awards, but he has only ever won one thing. As a youth, he was awarded a free session for the photography studio at a local supermarket.
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Ty Pendlebury

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LAS VEGAS -- The multi-room music market may be currently more crowded than a clown car, but it won't stop German company Raumfeld from introducing its range of wireless products to the US in 2015, having already launched in the UK.

What makes Raumfeld different? First, it does true hi-res audio -- not down-rezzed-to-CD-quality like Play-Fi or refuse-to-play-at-all like Sonos or HEOS -- and prices start at an affordable $299.

Secondly, the range consists of a range of streaming stereo speaker pairs -- also unusual -- which include the beautiful-looking Stereo M bookshelves (pictured above, $1,399/£720) with a concentric mid and tweeter, the matching Stereo L floorstanders ($2,399/£1,250) and the discrete Cubes ($699/£420).

The lineup also includes a single box speaker for the living room, the $599/£350 One M, as well as the splashproof $299/£220 One S bathroom speaker. Lastly there is also a $299/£150 connector box for hooking up to existing stereo systems.

Getting ready to raise the curtain at CES 2015 (pictures)

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The speakers use Wi-Fi and support DLNA with 24-bit FLAC and WAV decoding, as well as incorporating services like Spotify and Tidal, and everything is controlled by the free Raumfeld app.

While the components all operate on Wi-Fi, the larger components also include an analog input that can then be streamed to other zones.

While users can stream across 802.11n, Raumfeld recommends that users with three or more zones use wired connections or buy the Wi-Fi Expand kit.

Check out out more from CNET.com's extensive CES 2015 coverage.