McIntosh RS150 Wireless Speaker – Whole House Streaming

Once again, McIntosh Laboratory Inc. presents a solution that can clearly be assigned to the lifestyle category, namely a very compact all-in-one streaming solution in the form of the new McIntosh RS150 Wireless Speaker.

With the new McIntosh RS150 Wireless Speaker, McIntosh Laboratory Inc. is expanding its range in an increasingly important area for the company, namely the so-called all-in-one systems, which are aimed at customers for whom consumer electronics products are primarily understood as lifestyle solutions.

The aim is to offer a flexible solution in the most compact form, allowing music streaming from a wide variety of sources with the simplest of controls throughout the home. The new McIntosh RS150 Wireless Speaker succeeds the McIntosh RS100 Wireless Loudspeaker, whereby, according to the manufacturer, significant improvements have been made in important areas.

McIntosh RS150 Wireless Speaker – Music Streaming in Every Room of the House

In order to live up to the claim of offering music streaming in the simplest way in every room of the house, it must of course be a rather compact all-in-one system that finds its place everywhere simply by being as compact as possible.

In fact, the new McIntosh RS150 Wireless Speaker is quite “big” compared to other such solutions, measuring 36.8 cm in height, 19.5 cm in width and 21.9 cm in depth. It also weighs an impressive 8.4 kg.

One reason for this is that, according to the manufacturer, it is a solution that is completely committed to the impeccable reputation of the McIntosh brand and is thus designed to meet conventional criteria for the development of high-quality loudspeaker systems.

Solid construction

A particularly solid construction forms the framework for the new McIntosh RS150 Wireless Speaker, which essentially relies on a classic two-way bass reflex system.

This means a 20 mm titanium dome fluid-filled tweeter in combination with a 5 1/4 inch long-throw woofer as well as a rear-firing bass reflex system. The drivers are driven by amplifier modules with 30 watts for the tweeter and 90 watts for the woofer.

The new McIntosh RS150 Wireless Speaker is said to be capable of reproducing a frequency range between 48 Hz and 20 kHz, whereby the crossover of the DSP-based signal processing starts at 2 kHz. The manufacturer himself describes the acoustic advantages of the new McIntosh RS150 Wireless Speaker with a rich, room-filling sound.

Not only from a technical point of view is the new McIntosh RS150 Wireless Speaker supposed to resemble a classic bookshelf loudspeaker system, the design was also decided to be quite similar.

The rather simple housing of the new McIntosh RS150 Wireless Speaker features the speaker chassis just described at the front, which are hidden behind a speaker grill.

At first glance… typical McIntosh.

Directly below, the system’s controls are available in the form of two rotary encoders flanking a VU meter. How could it be otherwise, McIntosh Laboratory Inc. has of course taken up the classic design line of the US hi-fi manufacturer and once again skilfully implemented it in this class.

Streaming in all variations

Of course, the focus is on streaming, and the new McIntosh RS150 Wireless Speaker can be integrated into the network via cable and the RJ45 Ethernet interface provided for this purpose, but also via the integrated WiFi module in accordance with IEEE 802.11ac.

The new McIntosh RS150 Wireless Speaker is extremely flexible when it comes to supporting a wide range of platforms, and actually offers everything that can be expected from a solution of this kind these days.

In addition to Google Chromecast and Apple AirPlay2, the new McIntosh RS150 Wireless Speaker understands Spotify Connect and TIDAL Connect. Moreover, this solution is designated as Roon-ready, i.e. it can be directly integrated into the media management and hi-res multi-room audio streaming solution from Roon Labs LLC. Depending on the platform, the new McIntosh RS150 Wireless Speaker supports signal processing up to 24 bit and 192 kHz.

For the sake of completeness, nothing stands in the way of integration into the Smart Home. The manufacturer describes the new McIntosh RS150 Wireless Speaker as “Works with Hey Google”, which means that you can rely on voice control, not only Google Assistant but also Apple Siri via the already mentioned Apple AirPlay 2 support.

The McIntosh RS150 Wireless Speaker itself is not a so-called Smart Speaker, however, and requires one – Google Home or Google Home Mini or Apple HomePod or Apple HomePod mini, for example – to enable voice control.

Bluetooth as an alternative

But the new McIntosh RS150 Wireless Speaker is not only supposed to offer flexibility in the network, the simple direct integration of mobile devices via Bluetooth is of course also possible. Thanks to Bluetooth 5.0 from Qualcomm, not only SBC and AAC are supported, but also aptX, aptX HD and aptX LL, so that you can even use hi-res audio here, provided that the source device – smartphone or tablet, for example – also supports this.

Getting to the point

Music streaming in the most modern form of a wireless speaker and all the possibilities that go with it, combined with the sound that is typical for McIntosh Laboratory Inc. is how the US hi-fi manufacturer advertises its latest solution, the McIntosh RS150 Wireless Speaker. Once again, the company is pushing its move towards lifestyle solutions, a strategy that has been in place for some time.