The list of features on this $US200 Bluetooth speaker is absolutely remarkable. I’ve never seen so much bullshit on one page, and I look at bullshit about shitty products all day.
The marketing materials for Croon Audio’s The Original are pretentious mound of meaningless jargon. Even the name, “The Original,” clumsily falls off your tongue like an unexpected belch. Let’s review and translate some of the nonsense:
• Bluetooth® connectivity allows for all-digital-sound-transfer” — Indeed, Bluetooth is by definition a system that can be used for digital audio transfer. But what does that even mean for the quality of the sound in this product? Well, actually nothing really. Does it have a very good digital-to-analog converter on board that turns ones and zeros into sound? Or are we supposed to be really excited that two devices can talk to each other digitally? At least it’s all of the digital sound and not, you know, some of it.
• VLD — very low distortion technology — One would hope that any audio product maker would implement every technology at its disposal to reduce distortion. This VLD tech sounds like some sophisticated, proprietary goodness doesn’t it? Too bad it’s not anything we’ve ever heard of. Just a meaningless acronym.
• Set it and forget it function Where have I heard “set it and forget it” before? Ah, of course! It’s the slogan for the Showtime Rotisserie developed by legendary marketing man Ron Popeil. Except now instead of cooking some chicken, you’re pairing two Bluetooth devices. You mean they remember each other? Like all Bluetooth devices do? Yawn.
• Eternal Stand-By — ready to play as long it has power — In other words, as long as the power is connected the device will work as it is supposed to. It won’t magically shut itself off to conserve power. Funny, we thought power save modes were a good thing. But still, ETERNITY!
• Cone feet — a patent pending solution, works very well at isolating the speaker from the surrounding environment — Good luck patenting cone feet that have been used by speaker and furniture manufacturers in the past.
• tripod feet layout — another patent pending innovation, it provides stability regardless of the surface it is placed on — You mean, this device can stand up on three feet? First of all, why is that desirable in a Bluetooth speaker? Second of all, I seem to recall that the tripod configuration has been used by other products. Like a tripod for example.
I sure hope the engineers at Croon Audio builds better audio products than sentences. [Croon via TechCrunch]