Alexa Voice Control Skills Coming to BluOS

Pickering, Canada, December 14, 2018 – Lenbrook International, maker of high-resolution audio hardware and software solutions, is pleased to announce that a first set of Amazon Alexa Skills for its BluOS Hi-Res Distributed Audio platform, will be available January 15, 2019. Users of BluOS Enabled products from Bluesound, NAD Electronics, and DALI Speakers, will benefit from hands-free control of their music from any Amazon Echo device.

Amazon’s Alexa represents the first platform-wide voice control integration for BluOS in a broader voice control strategy that seeks to offer users a choice in which voice assistant they use. This strategy includes the creation of BluVoice, the voice-control interface that acts as the intermediary between BluOS and a compatible voice assistant. For example, BluOS users can ask their Echo device to deliver music playback commands to their BluOS Enabled device via BluVoice with phrases like, “Alexa, ask BluVoice to play preset 1 in the study,” or “Alexa, ask BluVoice to play new songs on Tidal”.

The strategy also opens up the possibilities of what can be controlled with voice assistants. With the first set of Alexa Skills to be published on January 15, 2019, BluOS users will be able to access popular or user-defined playlists from top music services, favourite radio stations, or adjust volume levels or group players together to sync music throughout the home. Some of these skills, like grouping and ungrouping players, as well as accessing playlists from a local library and not just from a streaming service, are examples of the rich voice control experience that BluOS’s implementation offers over others.