Syng Cell Alpha Wireless Spatial Audio HiFi Speaker

Firstly, this is easily the coolest looking, most futuristic speaker I have owned, even down to the packaging the speaker is in. The assembly & setup is quick, intuitive and thoughtful. My five year old very quickly asked to keep the packaging so he could build out some spaceship materials. I find myself staring at it when playing music, watching the top speaker part pulsate with the beat. It’s mesmerizing and a great new piece in the house. The Cell sounds amazing. Crisp, clear and with incredible separation between frequencies. You can really hear and feel the low end filling the room and perfectly balanced. It’s an honest sound, so you notice the quality of the source audio. This speaker makes you feel more closely connected to the music and the the recording environment - like you are more in the studio. Getting this initial Cell Alpha is an ear opening experience which sort of feels like the gateway to wanting to go deeper down the rabbit hole and order another Cell Alpha, so that I can pair them together and get an even larger spatial audio room experience. One Cell is already a rewarding experience, but I am definitely headed towards getting more of them and playing with them in different rooms throughout the house. I’ve only played music through the speaker so far, but given the dynamic range and clarity of these speakers, I imagine that connecting this to your Apple TV to watch movies will be a total pleasure. The Syng app is incredibly easy to use and you can see where this comes more in to play when you can directionally place audio in a room environment when you have multiple cells. Using Airplay on these speakers is a breeze. I’m really happy with this speaker and thoroughly impressed with the sound from just this one Cell. I can’t wait to add more of these and have my mind blown even more.

It turns out that the speaker will only work with Iphone... Insane, what were they thinking. You can only connect with it through an app, and the app is only available for Iphone, nothing for Android...

First off…I’m not an audiophile. I love music and have been a huge fan and collector of music (especially vinyl) my whole life. But for some reason the equipment I use to play my music has never been very important to me. That is, until now!! Inspired by a friend who criticized the way my music sounded I decided to bite the bullet and get a nice speaker. I looked at a bunch of different products but this SYNG speaker really stood out to me. The design is totally fresh, more like a sculpture than a piece of audio equipment, and based on other reviews I read it was really simple to use. When the box arrived I was not disappointed. Just the packaging alone seemed like something from the future. Really cool and serious props to whoever came up with the way it’s packaged. I actually saved the packaging because it’s so cool!! I pulled out the speaker and after figuring out how to put it together (not hard once I read the instructions) I was ready to plug it in. In order to activate it I had to download the SYNG app, and once it connected to my WiFi the speaker pretty much set itself up. It asks you to mark the location in your room where the speaker is and once that’s configured it does a cool sound check and it’s ready to connect. To start off I played a few songs off of AirPlay and they sounded so great!! Even as an audio novice I could immediately hear a massive difference. I decided to turn the speaker up to full blast (to the dismay of my neighbors) and it seriously felt like I was at a live concert. Like rib cage rattling sound…I thought the pictures in my wall were going to go crooked. So yeah, so far so good…but the true test was vinyl. I connected my usb cable (B to C) to my turntable and what followed was pure joy. I could hear every pop and crack of the first record I put on (Mexican Techno Pop from the 80s). The sound was so warm and full it seriously sounded like a completely new record. There were things in the music I had never even heard before. Everything I’ve played since is the same. Just awesome. My only criticism is that the best sounds come when you turn the speaker up LOUD, but I guess that’s true with all music. It still sounds great at a conversational level…but it’s super impressive when you turn it up. So yeah I’m not an audiophile but this SYNG thing has changed my life. It’s a bit pricey but totally worth it!! It’s a whole new experience in music appreciation for me, and even as a novice I hear and feel the difference in a very real way.

Sounds great, but not worth the high price. No support for Dolby Atmos surprised me at this price point. Probably would have been better if I got two Cell Alpha, but who can afford that? Buy a pair of Sonos Five instead and save yourself a lot of money.

09/2023 Same issue persists, Assigning it a fixed IP seems to shorten the time needed for it to reappear in the app. --------------------------- 02/2023 issue is back again, just won’t stay available for airplay forever. Once it disappears from the list of “speakers & TVs”, it would take the syng space app 2+ minutes to make it reappear. ——————- 10/2022 Syng seems to have fixed the issue, now it always appears in the airplay device list -------------------------- 09/2022 After the music streaming stops for some uncertain time interval, cell alpha disappears from the airplay device list. And it takes multiple tries to re-enable the airplay streaming feature.