Aether Cone Wifi And Bluetooth HiFi Speaker Review

Several families have always preferred wireless speakers as holiday gifts just because they believe everyone enjoys good music that comes from a convenient surround system and they are not wrong.

Most wireless speakers are cliché with their design, performance, and execution but the Aether Cone is unique in a plethora of ways.

Read on as we take a look at how and why the Aether Cone WiFi and Bluetooth Speaker is highly revered.

Aether Cone Wifi And Bluetooth HiFi Speaker Reviewed!!!

Features And Design

In the box of the speaker, you find just a velvet bag and charger with the bag encasing the visually appealing Aether Cone. The cone is available in two color options which are silver-white and copper-black.

Most users gravitate towards the black one because of how sleek and elegant it looks as opposed to the other color. When you view it from the sides, the Aether Cone looks like well… a cone.

The speaker grille is positioned in front and tapered down to the copper rear. The volume buttons are positioned atop the speaker.

On the speaker’s rear, there is a charging port, a power switch, and a tiny opening that seems that maybe the microphone.

The most imperative controls are positioned on the front of the grille. You get a huge dial by the side of the grille’s rim, a little turn will skip the current playing song while a larger turn will skip to an entirely another song.

In the center of the grille, you will also see an LED indicator and a multi-function button. The button can be used to play or pause.

Aside from that, a long press will unveil the voice command mode and the LED lights will change to blue.

The Aether allows you to play content from Podcasts, radio, and internet radio stations. To fully enjoy this wireless speaker, you have to undoubtedly buy the Rdio Unlimited subscription because you will be unable to play a lot of songs with the free version.

According to reports, the Aether Cone can study your learning habits. Most especially, it is aware that you love a song when you listen to it at full volume or when you allow it to play to the end but when you constantly skip a song or choose a different song, the Aether Cone will know over time that you do not like that particular music and avoid it in the future.

As remarkable as this feature is it can hunt you in the sense that you may be skipping the song just because it may not be the right season to play it or may not be the wrong mood.

For example, if you constantly skip a song like Feliz Navidad for obvious reasons, when it is time to listen to songs in the Christmas category, the speaker may not respond except you have to do it manually.

You can refer to the Aether Cone as a digital music player because it does not need to be paired with your cell phone or mobile device.

You can have the app installed on your iPod, iPhone, or iPad to play, skip, and pause songs; view the song playing, information of the artist, observe the level of the battery, and have control over the equalizer, but this is not a necessity.

You still can play music without using an iOS powered device. The Aether Cone does not apply to Android users as it only supports AirPlay for iOS and Mac.

Therefore, you can utilize the Cone as a wireless speaker for just Apple devices and they have to be connected to the same Wi-Fi network.

The last version does not have Bluetooth connectivity but got an update in 2015 and now features Bluetooth connectivity.

Quality Of The Audio

A lot of users had the idea that since the Aether Cone is a high-end speaker, the audio would be outstanding, but to their disappointment, it did not meet most of their expectations.

The Cone has an okay sound performance but it does not do well for its price, let’s just say it sounds as good as budget-friendly speakers like iLoud and UE Boom.

The Aether Cone’s sound is loud enough to permeate around your entire apartment but you are going to have to deal with playing it at the highest volume because it may not sound as bright and crisp as you would expect from such a premium device.

The sound imaging of the Aether Cone is narrow, it places its focus on low frequencies but it will be difficult for you to hear a punchy and tight bass response.

The Aether Cone’s mids lack transparency and details and it makes you enjoy the speaker less (than anticipated) at the highest of volumes.

The speaker is a fine design from Aether and does pretty well on the smart front but leaves a lot to be desired in terms of sound.

https://youtu.be/eWQWCw01upY

Let us move to connectivity and how you can manually update the firmware of the Cone.

Steps To Manually Update The Firmware Of The Aether Cone

After downloading the Aether Cone’s firmware, proceed by following these simple steps.

1. Press the volume button and hold it down
2. Press the play and pause button and release it three times, this should cause the light to flash white.
3. Turn on your tablet, computer, or phone to establish a connection with a Wi-Fi network that begins “Aether Cone”
4. After the connection is established, start a browser from your device and type this URL http://192.168.226.1 When you get to the URL page, click the button that says “About this Cone”
5. Then proceed to click the button that says “update” or the one the line that shows “firmware”
6. Proceed to click “Choose File” and click on the file to upload
7. Then you click “upload”
8. After the successful completion of the upload and you have successfully installed the firmware you will see a green confirmation screen.
9. Then proceed to restart your cone. Once the reboot is complete, you would have successfully installed the new firmware.

After the successful completion of these steps, to verify that you currently use the latest version of firmware, carry out the first five steps.

Using Aether To Pair With A Bluetooth Enabled Device

Here are three simple steps on how you can pair your Aether Cone with an external device via Bluetooth

1. Press the volume button and hold it down
2. Press the play and pause button and release it thrice, this will cause the lights to flash blue
3. Now go to your tablet, computer, phone, or your preferred device turn it on and start Bluetooth pair mode according to the instructions of the device.

How To Setup Wi-Fi Or Rename your device

1. Press the volume button and hold it down
2. Press the play and pause button and release it three times, this should cause the light to flash white.
3. Turn on your tablet, computer, or phone to establish a connection with a Wi-Fi network that begins “Aether Cone”
4. After the connection is established, start a browser from your device and type this URL http://192.168.226.1
5. Click on the “configure this cone” button when it appears.
6. Choose your Wi-Fi network from the options and type in the password of your Wi-Fi if required.
7. Pick a device name. This name will be utilized for Spotify and AirPlay Connect.
8. Finally, click on “submit” and you are done

How To Make Use Of AirPlay Mode

1. Repeat the same steps in “How To Setup Wi-Fi”
2. Choose the device on your tablet, phone, or computer as the output speaker.

The Physical Controls

Whenever you are playing music via AirPlay, Spotify Connect, or Bluetooth, a dial turn will follow suit or go back depending on the turn’s direction. The center button has the play/pause function.

Hard Reboot

Make use of these hard reset steps if you are turning the power switch off and on does not solve your problem. Have no worries though as none of your settings are wiped by the hard reset.

1. Get the Cone plugged into a power outlet and ensure the power cord is attached.
2. Power it on
3. Press both volume buttons for 10 seconds or as long as it takes for the lights to flash red or white before releasing the buttons.
4. This will reboot your cone.

Reset Factory Data

1. Hold the volume – button down and have the dial turned left a total of 7 times.
2. After doing this, the flash will turn amber, red, or white
3. Release the buttons and restart the device
4. If the Cone starts flashing a white pattern after being turned on, then you have been able to successfully reset it
5. Shut it down and all the data is no more.