For some strange reason there’s a growing school of thought that says we all want to link together our tablet computers and mobile phones to create synchronized speakers that will play audio together in a group. Samsung probably started it with its Group Play concept, but we’re struggling to work out how it becomes useful in the real world.
Nevertheless we’re happy to feature this innovative new venture called Speaker Blast because they believe it could actually be very useful, for things like flash mobs, silent aerobic classes, impromptu drive-in movies and the like. The service (based on a web site, not an app!) lets you play the same audio track on multiple devices in sync, so you can have your iPhone, laptop, tablet and/or desktop computer all belting out the same audio at the same time, acting as a large audio distribution system.
The system comes with a number of limitations at the moment as it is in beta testing mode, in that you can only use it with a set number of songs (each must be under 2MB in size apparently) and it only works with the Chrome browser on any device. We assume these are early issues, which will disappear with time as the tech improves. It does however work with any kind of device ranging from iOS products to Android and Windows.
Once you’ve selected your song, you then use the URL to share it with your other devices, sync them up and press play on the main computer. We tried it with a desktop computer and single Android smartphone and it worked fine, except that there was noticeable lag between the main unit and the slave phone. The developers state that this may be the case in certain environments.
Which brings us to our own suggested use. This seems like it could be a good way to distribute audio easily when you want to ensure that everyone hears something in a crowded environment. Such as like a convention or a museum or some public situation like that. You’d need to update the tech to cope reliably with multiple users accessing the same audio stream, and it needs to work well on a busy WiFi network, but it’s got potential for that sort of work we believe.
Anyhoo, it’s an interesting technology and one that we hope we’ll one day see doing great work in public spaces everywhere.
