Cue Acoustics PS1 aims to rock your bookshelf

Cue Acoustics, whose r1 iPod dock we thought highly of back in 2009, has an interesting new set of bookshelf speakers in the works. The PS1 is based around a concentric 3/4" silk dome tweeter and 3 1/2" midrange driver, along with a 5" downward-firing subwoofer, rounded out by a pair of passive radiators. Everything's packaged in very solid feeling 1"-thick MDF, with a substantial aluminum base (a floorstanding option will be available), driven by 150 watts of class-D amplification per side.

IMAG0185Onboard DSP handles time aligment and EQ (each pair that goes out the door will be individually tweaked); in combination with the assymetric driver placement Cue's Sam Millen told me that this ensures the pair is flat (+/- 1.5 dB) from 27 Hz on up to 22 kHz. Obviously in a trade-show environment (we ran into the PS1's at last night's Pepcom Digital Experience event in NYC) we couldn't do any critical listening, but the system develops impressive power.

The primary application is expected to be wireless; with DNLA onboard; Cue is also developing a proprietary DNLA-compliant dongle to stream uncompressed audio to the speaker pair. Optical S/PDIF and analog RCA inputs will also be present on production models.

Pricing isn't yet set, but is expected to be in line with recent bookshelf offerings from outfits like Bowers & Wilkins. We're looking forward to getting in a more serious listen closer to launch time (later this year).

- Michael Berk

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