Sound, CD quality, wirelessly. That’s what we offered back in 2003. The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas is where the big and the bold electronics and technology companies go to show off what’s coming next at the start of January every year. We at Sonneteer have spent many a January queuing up at passport control in sin city and in 2003 we had something even more groundbreaking than the Bronte to show. This was the global expose of our Bard wireless audio system.
The high performance Audio part of the CES show in those days took place at the Alexis Park Hotel, next door to Hard Rock (who put on a fine breakfast) and short hop from the strip. As journalists and members of the trade walked into our show suite they were faced with pair of loudspeakers connected to a small ‘Plug top’ box connected to the mains socket in the wall. At first they were puzzled. Then their brains clicked to the ‘obvious’ logical conclusion that we were transmitting audio via the mains and the speakers were active. They were (and they were many) of course mistaken on both accounts. What they were actually witnessing was the Bard Three amplifier which was receiving music from either our Byron CD player next door via a BardOne transmitter pod or a BardUSB transmitter dongle plugged into a laptop also in the room next door. In both cases the Amplifier, which was driving the floor standing loudspeakers effortlessly, was playing uncompressed CD quality digital audio received over the airwaves. As many reviewer and user would profess over the following years, they sounded pretty good too. So good in fact we pitched them against similarly priced separates hi-fi gear and more often than not the latter came across wanting.
Amongst many others a couple of years later What HiFi was to proclaim:
Bard is a stroke of genius
What Hi Fi? September 2005.