Samsung’s tube-based speaker docks a new direction for the company

By Caleb Denison January 3, 2012

When was the last time you heard someone bragging about their Samsung sound system? Right… never.

We’re pretty sure this has never happened because Samsung hasn’t been in the business of making great sounding audio equipment. It just hasn’t been a priority for the company. Samsung has always been content to make some excellent looking televisions and supplement them with all-in-one audio systems that bundle DVD or Blu-ray players with 5.1 speaker systems that sound… well… better than built-in TV speakers.

Until now.

Samsung just announced a handful of products which we expect will be shown off at CES 2012 and while three of them at least appear to fit the company’s established audio M.O., one product in particular shows Samsung is radically changing its tune when it comes to music playback.

The Samsung DA-E750 Audio Dock is Samsung’s first such device and definitely its nicest looking piece of audio kit to date. What makes this piece so special is the use of a vacuum tube in the pre-amp stage. Samsung says it pairs this tube pre-amp with a 100 watt digital amplifier to create a hybrid solution that will yield the best of the analog and digital worlds. The tube pre-amp is intended to yield that classically warm tube sound while the digital amplifier provides clean, energy efficient and musical muscle.

Samsung describes the speaker dock as having a 2.1 speaker compliment with built-in subwoofer. We’re not sure how to resolve that claim with the included image, which shows what appear to be woven woofers with phase plugs and, possibly, tweeters in between. That could mean one of the woofers is a passive radiator or that the two round bits in the middle aren’t tweeters at all. Perhaps there’s a down firing woofer?

Speculation aside, Samsung says its new speaker dock will be compatible with both iOS devices as well as its own Galaxy S smartphones, supports Airplay and Allshare and features USB and analog inputs with support for MP3, WMA and WAV files.

In addition to the DA-E750, Samsung also announced the lower powered, tubeless DA-E670 audio dock, the 1,300-watt HT-E6730W 7.1 Blu-ray home theater system with wireless surround speakers and the interesting looking HW-E550, a hybrid soundbar solution that can be broken into two separate speakers.

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