Geeks are using science to make the best chocolate ever

Rob Anderson is a geek. So he makes chocolate for other geeks, or, more accurately, “people who really like chocolate and geek out about it.”

What does he mean by that? If you change one step of the chocolate-making process, you change the taste of the resulting chocolate entirely. And Anderson wants to show you exactly what that means. Fresco Chocolate, his company, roasts beans four different ways and conches (aka aerates and stirs) chocolate four different ways to create totally unique bars that bring the eater into the factory with him to be part of the process.

Oh, and by the way, he built most of the machines he uses himself.

The thing is, Anderson isn’t alone. He’s part of a new movement called bean-to-bar chocolate that is revolutionizing chocolate by making it from scratch with a strong focus on flavor. This distinctly American phenomenon has expanded in the past 12 years from five bean-to-bar chocolate makers to around 200 as of this writing. Almost all of these folks construct some of their machines themselves, and a large portion of them come from the tech and engineering world. Why? It all comes back to good old geekery.

All chocolate is made from cocoa beans, but “bean-to-bar chocolate” has come to mean something distinct.

For contrast, most of the chocolate that we eat is made by big companies. They mix low-quality cocoa beans from all over the world in big batches and then overroast them and add a ton of sugar, vanillin (fake vanilla!), cocoa butter and emulsifiers like soy lecithin to guarantee that the taste and texture are always the same. What we think chocolate tastes like is usually just sugar and vanilla.

This type of product is generally called industrial chocolate. Not all of it is bad, but the term is often a shorthand way of saying that low cost and consistency are the maker’s primary goals. Industrial chocolate turns up in many places, especially in the candy bars and chocolate bars we buy at the grocery store, and often in the treats we buy from chocolatiers, aka someone who makes candies and confections, like truffles, chocolate bark and so on.

Bean-to-bar chocolate, on the other hand, is made from scratch, usually by a single person or small group of people. A bean-to-bar chocolate maker sources whole cocoa beans and then roasts, grinds and smoothens them into chocolate in a single facility. They’re engineers, creating chocolate from raw materials.

“Roasts, grinds and smoothens” sounds easy, but in reality, it’s a nuanced, almost-impossible process with thousands of variables.

First makers source the beans from farmers. Much of a good chocolate’s flavor comes from what happens at the farm level, the way the fresh beans are fermented and then dried (for example, improperly fermented beans will have off-tastes like smoked ham). So makers often work directly with farmers or reliable go-betweens to guarantee that they’re getting high-quality products and to ensure that farmers are being paid fairly for their work, usually much more than fair-trade prices.

There’s plenty of technology at the farm level, but for the most part, bean-to-bar makers innovate on what happens after the farm, at the factory. First, makers take those dried beans and roast them, using everything from conventional kitchen ovens to reengineered clothes dryers, and the temperature and time aren’t standardized at all. But the roaster, temperature and timing hugely affect how the chocolate tastes, so this is one of the most important steps in the chocolate-making process.

Amber Day

After roasting, each cocoa bean needs to be cracked to reveal the cocoa nibs inside. The cracked beans are then sorted into nibs and inedible husks in a process called winnowing.

The cocoa nibs are then ground into tiny, tiny particles in a machine called a melangeur so that the resulting chocolate “liquor” (sorry, it’s not alcoholic) is, well, liquidy. It’s often pretty gritty at this stage, so it’s ground again with sugar and other ingredients to make sure all the particles of cocoa, sugar and anything else are the same tiny micron size. Some makers then use a machine called a conche to mix and polish the chocolate and release volatile acids, making it even smoother and more like the European-style chocolate that we’re used to eating.

Finally, the chocolate must be heated and cooled to the correct temperature to have a nice snap and sheen, a process called tempering. After this process, the chocolate is shelf-stable and ready to be eaten.

By changing variables like the roasting temperature and the type of machine they use, makers can shape the chocolate and bring out different flavors, creating chocolate that fits their personality (and taste buds).

You need to be an engineer, physicist and bona fide geek to make chocolate from scratch, someone who wants to spend all day with machines, tweaking tiny pieces to make them run more efficiently. You also need to understand the chemistry behind those almond-shaped beans and how adjusting one step will affect the rest. Further, because chocolate has become an industrial product over the past 150 years, the available machines are enormous (and enormously expensive), which means if you’re making chocolate on a small scale, you might just have to build your own.

Chocolate isn’t the only industrialized product to get an overhaul. As our food systems have become more and more opaque, people are increasingly interested in where their food comes from, how it’s made and who makes it. Take farm-to-table, for example, where the vegetable is now reified. Or craft beer, with thousands of people brewing in their basements and hundreds of microbreweries popping up around the country, making beverages that leave Anheuser-Busch to the frat boys (who, come to think of it, are now drinking the craft stuff too). Meanwhile specialty coffee has paved the way for chocolate’s entrance, highlighting the farmers and normalizing the idea of single-origin beans.

In other words, it’s chocolate’s turn.

Molly DeCoudreaux

This didn’t happen by accident. A retired organic chemist named John Nanci in Eugene, Oregon, had seen the craft-beer and specialty-coffee industries take off, and when he learned about making chocolate from scratch, “it clicked,” he said. “I was like, ‘I’m not missing this boat.’”

In 2005, the year that the first bean-to-bar chocolate maker in the U.S., called Scharffenberger, sold to Hershey for about $50 million, Nanci created a site called Chocolate Alchemy that detailed how to make chocolate at home with little machinery, something that everyone said couldn’t be done. He discovered that after roasting the beans in your oven of choice, you can use a Champion brand juicer to crack them open quickly. Then you put the cracked beans in a big bowl and blow air over them with a hairdryer: The light shells blow away, leaving the nibs. (This is a huge improvement over separating nib from husk by hand, a painstakingly labor-intensive method.)

“You’ll have about a 6-foot circle of husk around you,” Nanci writes on his site, Chocolate Alchemy, about using a hairdryer. “The kitchen is not such a good option.”

He also took machines made for different purposes and jury-rigged them to work for small-batch chocolate. For example, he realized that melangeurs (the machines used to grind cocoa nibs) are really just big granite grinders. “I Googled ‘granite stone and granite wheels,’ and what popped up was an Indian wet grinder,” he remembered. Wet grinders are used to grind lentils, among other things. “And I went, ‘Oh, that looks similar.’”

So he bought one, found out that it overheated immediately when grinding nibs, and tore it apart. “I learned about what makes motors overheat, modified it and then talked to the company and said, ‘I have a new market for you. Are you willing to make these modifications and sell it as chocolate melangeur?’”

“I present it as a chemist, because I am a chemist.”

It was, and it did, and now you can buy a variety of Spectra melangeurs on Nanci’s site. Other similar melangeurs have popped up as well, such as the aptly named Cocoatown, which you’ll find in almost every bean-to-bar chocolate maker’s factory.

That’s only one of the machines Nanci created, and it’s a small piece of his website, which is bursting with beans you can buy (still the only source for people just getting started) and the nitty-gritty about how to make chocolate from scratch. “I present it as a chemist,” he explained, “because I am a chemist.”

Almost all bean-to-bar makers in the country got their start using Nanci’s beans and methods. Some bigger makers like Raaka still use machines that he invented and produced. Meanwhile, on the other end of the spectrum, almost half of his customers buy machines and beans to make chocolate at home for themselves, not to sell.

I say “almost” because there are also those like Amano Chocolate, founded by Art Pollard in that golden year, 2005. Pollard is a trained physicist who was “assisting on nuclear projects” at Los Alamos by time he was 13, and his partner, Clark Goble, worked at Los Alamos as well, focusing on nuclear modeling, among other things.The two have run a search-engine technology company called Lextek International since 1993, with clients like Apple, Prodigy and Motorola. You’ve most likely used their product, because it’s even been incorporated into Adobe Acrobat, starting with version 6.0 to the present.

Pollard invested in vintage machinery for his chocolate factory, like an enormous winnowing machine from the 1920s or 1930s. “Most all of our machines, I’ve rebuilt myself,” he explained. “For a lot of them, parts aren’t available anymore, so I had to either make the part from scratch myself or design the parts and have them machined.”

Pollard believes “it’s critical” to have a background in technology and engineering in order to make chocolate. “I highly recommend designing and building your own machines, because you learn why things are the way they are. If someone just buys a machine, they just know, this machine works.” If you buy readymade machines, Pollard says “you lose the whys. It’s the whys that are important for making a superior-quality product.”

“There was a time when we made an engineering mistake and had to throw out $30,000 worth of chocolate.”

That knowledge also helps things run more smoothly. For example, recently, when Pollard bought a new machine, it arrived without the necessary software. Rather than send it back or hire an engineer, both of which would cause him to lose weeks of production, Pollard simply took a weekend and designed and built a control system himself.

That’s not to say it’s all smooth sailing. “There was a time when we made an engineering mistake and had to throw out $30,000 worth of chocolate,” Pollard remembered.

This kind of mistake, and the trial and error that leads to it, has caused chocolate maker Alan McClure, who owns Patric Chocolate and is widely considered one of the best makers in the country, to stop scouring chemistry books on his own and go back to school to pursue his Ph.D. in food science.

If you could cut down on the trial and error inherent in making craft chocolate (figuring out the right roasting temperature for each batch of beans, deciding how long to conche and so on) by understanding the chemistry behind it — well, the sky would be the limit.

“I had to struggle the whole time to understand more about what I’m doing, the levers and dials that you pull as a chocolate maker,” McClure said about what it was like to make chocolate before grad school. “Understanding scientific ways of approaching things has allowed me to have more solid results when I’m doing my own R&D,” he continued. “My decisions tend to be better, based on facts” rather than on a hunch.

“I had to struggle the whole time to understand more about what I’m doing.”

McClure is already using his new knowledge to make a difference. For example, he’s spent the past few years of his graduate work analyzing different cocoa samples to evaluate their levels of theobromine, caffeine and epicatechin. Those three compounds, among others, give chocolate its signature bitter taste, one that turns many people off dark chocolate.

“I’ve been looking at the amounts of those in different origins of cocoa in an effort to learn more about exactly where the bitterness is coming from,” he explained. By analyzing the amounts of each in different types of cocoas, he can better understand how to make less-bitter chocolate from all sorts of beans.

This dedication to hard science is part of the craft-chocolate movement’s identity. Take Rob Anderson, the owner of Fresco Chocolate. With degrees in computer science and electrical engineering, he works as a senior director of emerging technologies at an industrial-electronics-manufacturing company. “I don’t do the typical executive sort of things like play golf and hang out at the country club,” he said. “I come home to make chocolate.”

For Anderson, much of the fun of chocolate, which he’s been making since the early 2000s, comes from building the machines and problem-solving the technical snafus. Take his cocoa-bean roaster, which is made out of a modified commercial clothes dryer (“I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is perfect,’” he recalls on finding it).

Over 15 years, Anderson’s roaster has gone through at least four iterations; his winnower, over a dozen; his conche, four. It turns out it’s actually pretty hard to make great chocolate.

And just because you have a good machine doesn’t mean you can make good chocolate. It’s all about how you use those machines. Anderson roasts beans three different ways (for example, he describes “light” as “just enough to soften raw cocoa’s acidic or green edge”) and conches the resulting chocolate four different ways (for example, he describes “long” as “flavor peaks and valleys softened to a melodic harmony”).

He prints that information on Fresco’s labels and lets you choose the style you like the best. Do you want a dark roast and long conche like the Marañón 230 from Peru? A light roast and no conche like the Papua New Guinea 222? Or would you prefer a medium roast and medium conche like the Dominican Republic 224 (which won a gold award at the 2015 International Chocolate Awards)?

In the tech world, you grow up with the idea that you can do anything you want in this life. You just have to learn how.

Art Pollard, Amano Chocolate

This kind of experimentation is the bedrock of an entire school of thought within bean-to-bar chocolate, and the king of it is Dandelion Chocolate. The San Francisco-based company was started by Todd Masonis and Cameron Ring in a basement in Silicon Valley in 2010.

Like many bean-to-bar makers, Dandelion Chocolate built its own machine to separate the cocoa beans’ husks and nibs.

Sound like another kind of company (cough, software, cough)? You’re spot-on: Straight out of college at Stanford, the two had started a tech company called Plaxo with Sean Parker (whom you might remember from Napster), and in 2008, after a few tough years, they sold it to Comcast for upward of $150 million.

That left them with plenty of time on their hands. So what did they do? Started making chocolate, of course. “We were used to writing software,” Todd remembered, “but building a machine that could do something physical was new and interesting.”

The two Stanford grads harnessed their tech-startup know-how and applied it to a new field. They wouldn’t be artists creating a masterpiece but instead pragmatists solving a problem: how to make the best chocolate possible.

When Alain Ducasse opened his chocolate factory in Paris, he invited old-school makers to come try his chocolate. They said essentially to give it 30 years and maybe then Ducasse would have enough experience to make good chocolate. “We don’t want to wait until 2045 to make a good batch,” Todd said. “So we had to figure out how to make good chocolate assuming we know nothing.”

Using A/B testing, Dandelion has developed a methodology that allows it to create amazing chocolate. When the company sources a new type of cocoa bean, it immediately sets to testing it with multiple experiments to discover the perfect process for that particular bean. (“The biggest driver of the flavor is going to be the beans and the fermentation,” Todd said. “By the time we get them, that’s already locked in.” That’s why Dandelion spends much of its time and energy sourcing high-quality cocoa beans from around the world. However, that’s a different story.)

“The biggest driver based on our experiments is the roasting,” Todd explained. They roast batches at slightly different temperatures or for slightly different amounts of time, then make chocolate bars with those batches.

And that’s when the fun begins. Dandelion employees, friends, family — a whole smattering of people — sit down and blind taste-test the different bars, then rate each on a scale of -2 to 2.

“Sometimes we mix it up and put two of the same in there to see if people are cheating or lying or whatever,” he said. “But if you get enough people tasting, you start to see that one roast is preferred over another.”

It takes anywhere from 10 to 20 batches of chocolate to find the right roast — and one that matches their house style (lightly roasted, two-ingredient bars that highlight the bean’s inherent flavor notes).

The resulting chocolate mesmerizes your mouth, changing your idea of what chocolate can taste like. So it’s no surprise that there’s more demand than Dandelion can supply: Masonis said they entered 2017 with a waiting list of more than 500 stores that want to carry their bars.

The company wants to change that, which is why it’s opening a giant factory in San Francisco’s Mission District, which will increase production 10 times. “It’s not good enough to double the amount or eke out 10 percent or 20 percent more,” Masonis explained about the economics of scale. “We have to get to a whole new order of magnitude.”

They’ve done 10 times more work to get to that new order of magnitude as well: They sent a team across the world to try different machines. “We tested the exact same beans from three different processes to try to figure out which machinery was used on the beans at each factory” and which worked the best, Masonis said. “For every machine that we get, we do taste tests and validate and say we won’t do this unless it makes chocolate that’s better than what we do today.”

Call it the scientific method times 10.

Like Nanci, Dandelion wants to share its information. In mid-November, it released a book called Making Chocolate: From Bean to Bar to S’more that promises to change the game for bean-to-bar chocolate. In it, the Dandelion team tells you, step by step, in sometimes excruciating detail, how to make chocolate from scratch. “The Quick Start Guide” is only six pages, but “The Process, Unabridged” is 68 pages and includes everything from how to build your own winnower with PVC pipe to graphs of the “approximate melting points of polymorphic crystal forms.”

This might not seem like that big of a deal, considering that there are already resources like Chocolate Alchemy. Well, I should say “resource,” singular. Because the other resources are technical manuals from the past century, often in foreign languages, and are often inapplicable to this new way of making chocolate. Makers are pretty much left to decipher the process on their own, mostly through trial and error. And we’ve seen how that goes.

For new makers, the text is invaluable. This much information, presented clearly, with graphs, times, temperatures and detailed explanations of such a complicated process, will help the industry grow tremendously. “It’s everything we wanted to know about how to make chocolate when we got started,” said Greg D’Alesandre, co-owner and bean “sourcerer,” who was Dr. Wave (aka the product manager of Google Wave) in another life.

It’s also indicative of the industry that Dandelion wants to share what it knows. “A couple of people who tested our recipes for how to make chocolate at home have gone on to start their own chocolate companies,” said Masonis, reciting a JFK quotation that I have heard from a majority of chocolate makers: “A rising tide lifts all boats.”

In other words, the chocolate that we’re eating now is the best that’s ever existed, and it will only continue to get better. “In the tech world, you grow up with the idea that you can do anything you want in this life,” said Pollard. “You just have to learn how.”

Images and parts of this story were excerpted from Bean-to-Bar Chocolate, © by Megan Giller, used with permission from Storey Publishing.

Images: William Mullan (Raaka chocolate lead image, chocolate melangeur); Paul Takeuchi (nibs falling); Amber Day (chocolate process illustration); Molly DeCoudreaux (Dandelion factory); Megan Giller (Dandelion winnower); Mars Vilaubi (Patric bar)

Microsoft improves transparency for sexual harassment claims

The slew of sexual harassment disclosures in the entertainment business has started to influence the technology world, and Microsoft in particular sees this as an opportunity to rethink its policies. It’s waiving the requirement for pre-dispute arbitration agreements in sexual harassment claims, which could keep complaints out of court and thus out of the public eye. The company already didn’t enforce an arbitration clause relating to sexual harassment, but now wants to eliminate that obligation for the “limited number” of workers who would be affected.

The move comes simultaneously with Microsoft’s endorsement of a bipartisan Senate bill, the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Harassment Act, that would ensure claims are addressed in court. As Senator Kirsten Gillibrand notes, this should prevent serial harassers from “climbing the corporate ladder” and let victims speak out. In theory, you should see fewer instances of toxic corporate culture where management tolerates or even perpetrates harassment knowing there will be few if any public consequences.

This doesn’t mean that Microsoft is doing away with arbitration as a whole. It sees this as a “reasonable” complement to internal processes for other complaints. And that’s unfortunate — companies often prefer arbitration because it tends to artificially favor their side and maintain secrecy (hence why telecoms often force arbitration for disputes). However, the waiver could have a significant impact on sexual harassment claims at Microsoft and the tech industry at large. Victims may be more comfortable coming forward, and other companies might implement similar policies.

Via: New York Times

Source: Microsoft On the Issues

YouTube TV Delays Apple TV App to Q1 2018

YouTube has delayed its YouTube TV apps for Apple TV and Roku devices until the first quarter of 2018, a company representative told CNET today. The over-the-top service’s Apple TV app was initially planned for a launch before the end of 2017, so with less than two weeks left in the year the company has officially pushed back the app’s launch to next year.

Around the same Q1 2018 window, YouTube will also debut apps for older models of Samsung’s smart TVs, as well as Sony TVs using Linux-based operating systems. YouTube TV launched earlier this year on the web, iOS, and Android in five U.S. cities. The app eventually expanded to Chromecast, Xbox One, Android TV, and newer Samsung and LG smart TVs across more than 80 cities.

The $35/month service offers subscribers the ability to stream cable network television shows on ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, CW, Disney, ESPN, FX, USA, and dozens of other major channels. YouTube TV is a competitor to similar services like Sling TV, Hulu with Live TV, DirecTV Now, and Playstation Vue, all of which can be viewed on the fourth and fifth generation Apple TV models. In addition to streaming live TV, YouTube TV includes content from the $9.99/month YouTube Red service.

Related Roundup: Apple TVTags: YouTube, YouTube TVBuyer’s Guide: Apple TV (Buy Now)
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Echo Look can give you style tips from Amazon’s fashionistas

If you’re tiring of the Echo Look’s AI-powered style tips, we have good news. Now, you can submit your full-body selfies to the Amazon Spark hive for feedback from real-life humans. The e-retail giant launched the camera-equipped Echo Look in June as an invite-only purchase, following it up with its Instagram-style social shopping feed, Amazon Spark, in July. Now, rather predictably, it’s combining the two, according to CNET.

Here’s how it works: You snap selfies in the outfits you’re planning on wearing using the Echo Look and instead of just sharing them with Amazon’s algorithms (or with friends and family), you can now upload them to Amazon Spark for advice from complete strangers. After all, what could be better for your self-esteem than a bunch of randoms judging and commenting on your clothes and body?

Add a question to complete your post, like “which outfit should I wear tonight?” and let the voting commence. The whole thing is tied to your Amazon username, and you can also enable notifications on the Echo Look app.

It only works on iOS for now, with Amazon explaining that it’s a way to “get input on your outfits from others who love fashion as much as you do.” Or you could end up siding with the AI over real-life folk and start questioning your humanity. Who cares when your ensemble looks fire, right?

Source: CNET

Switching mobile operators could soon begin with a text

Ofcom has introduced new rules that should make it easier to switch mobile networks in the UK. At the moment, cancelling a contract and setting up a new one is complicated and time consuming, especially if you want to keep your old number. You have to ring both providers, settle any outstanding debts and then try to wrangle a single switchover date — otherwise you’re double-paying for a while, or going without a phone for a few days. To fix the problem, Ofcom is introducing an “auto-switch” system that forces providers to sort out the finer details on their own.

Here’s how it works: You request a code online, by text, or by calling your provider. You’re then free to shop around and when you’re ready to make the switch, you quote the code. Everything is transferred within one working day (including your number, should you wish to keep it.) There’s no overlap — the system ensures your old and new contracts link up perfectly. Ofcom is abolishing “notice period” charges too, so it doesn’t matter when you want to cancel (if you have outstanding fees, though, like a part-paid handset, they’ll be quoted when you request the code.)

There are numerous benefits. For one, it’s possible to cancel your current contract without calling anyone. That means you don’t have to wrestle with a salesperson as they try to persuade you to stay. For another, you don’t have to worry about PAC codes or a temporary number while you transfer your old digits. Finally, the system should ensure a clean break from your old contract — no more wondering if everything, finally, has been paid off with your previous provider. Such a system will take a while to set up, however, so Ofcom has set a compliance deadline of July 2019.

Source: Ofcom

France gives WhatsApp a month to stop sharing data with Facebook

After the EU slapped it with a €110 million fine over unlawful WhatsApp data sharing, you’d think Facebook would be eager to comply with local privacy laws. But France says it has not cooperated with data protection authority CNIL, and could face another sanction if it doesn’t get its act together within 30 days. The social network is still transferring Whatsapp data for “business intelligence,” it claims, and the only way that users can opt out is by uninstalling the app.

The French regulator noticed that WhatsApp was sharing user data like phone numbers to Facebook for “business intelligence” reasons. When it repeatedly asked to see the data, Facebook said that it is stored in the US, and “it considers that it is only subject to the legislation of the country,” according to the CNIL. The regulator countered that any time data is gathered in France, it becomes the authority in charge.

France said that while the notice was issued to Facebook, it’s also meant to advise users that this “massive data transfer from WhatsApp to Facebook” was taking place. “The only way to refuse the data transfer for ‘business intelligence’ purposes is to uninstall the application,” it adds.

WhatsApp cannot claim a legitimate interest to massively transfer data to the company Facebook Inc. insofar as this transfer does not provide adequate guarantees allowing to preserve the interest or the fundamental freedoms of users since there is no mechanism whereby they can refuse it while continuing to use the application.

“We will continue to work with the CNIL to ensure users understand what information we collect, as well as how it’s used,” Facebook told Engadget. “And we’re committed to resolving the different, and at times conflicting, concerns we’ve heard from European Data Protection Authorities with a common EU approach before the General Data Protection Regulation comes into force in May 2018.”

Facebook is also in trouble in Germany, where the competition authority accused it of transferring user data in an “abusive” way to third party sites. The cartel office (FCO) said Facebook was exerting its “market dominant” position to gather excessive amounts of data, the Financial Times reports. “From the current state of affairs we are not convinced that users have given their effective consent to Facebook’s data tracking and the merging of data into their Facebook account,” said FCO head Andreas Mundt.

As Facebook noted in its comment, new EU data protection rules will kick in next year, and they will have a lot more bite. Privacy violations can be fined up to four percent of a company’s global turnover, which is in the case of Facebook, is a hell of a lot. In the meantime, France’s CNIL commission said that Facebook has 30 days to comply with the ruling or it will face an investigation and possible sanction.

Update: Facebook’s full statement to Engadget about the WhatsApp data privacy issue is below.

Privacy is incredibly important to WhatsApp. It’s why we collect very little data, and encrypt every message. We will continue to work with the CNIL to ensure users understand what information we collect, as well as how it’s used. And we’re committed to resolving the different, and at times conflicting concerns, we’ve heard from European Data Protection Authorities with a common EU approach before the General Data Protection Regulation comes into force in May 2018.

Via: Reuters

Source: CNIL

Google Home Max review: An assistant for music lovers

Smart speakers like the Amazon Echo and Google Home have proved useful — but they tend not to sound very good. Sure, they’re serviceable in a pinch, and are better than most cheap Bluetooth speakers, but they don’t compare to options like the entire Sonos lineup, let alone a nice set of bookshelf speakers like the Audioengine A5+. That’s slowly changing, though: The Alexa-powered Sonos One speaker performs well and is affordable, while Apple’s forthcoming HomePod sounded excellent in a brief demo we saw earlier this year.

Google’s Home Max is the company’s first attempt to join the HiFi audio space — it does everything that the smaller Home speakers do, but with significantly larger and higher-caliber components. Of course, that higher quality comes at a significantly higher price. At $399, the Home Max is more comparable with dedicated, higher-quality speakers. But the Home Max offers a unique combination of simplicity, high-quality audio and voice-activated features courtesy of the Google Assistant.

Hardware

The Google Home Max is a large, heavy speaker; it’s definitely more conspicuous than the standard Home or Amazon’s Echo lineup. Still, it’s a charming, attractive device. The gently rounded corners and fabric-covered front both bring to mind Google’s tiny Home Mini and make it just a bit more “friendly” than your average speaker. It’s similar in size to the Sonos Play:5 and just as well-built.

Google says it designed the fabric on the front to be acoustically transparent and that it tried several dozen options before settling on the weave pattern. I’ve never listened to the speaker without the cloth in the way, so I don’t have anything to benchmark against, but it doesn’t appear to impede audio in any way.

There’s not much else about the Home Max that’s visually remarkable. Around the back, you’ll find the mic-mute switch, power jack, a USB-C port and a 3.5mm audio input. It’s not clear what the USB-C port is meant for aside from charging your smartphone. But the 3.5mm jack is useful for plugging in a variety of audio devices, from directly hooking up a tablet or smartphone (not the Pixel 2 or newer iPhones, though!) to adding a turntable to your setup. I gave a few records a spin and it worked easily, although I had to use an RCA-to-3.5mm converter I had around. It would be nice if the Home Max had RCA ports, because so many traditional home-audio products use them, but most users will probably be opting for Spotify.

The top of the speaker also includes a thin strip of touch-sensitive controls; there’s a line to help orient you. Tapping the center of that line pauses or resumes music, while sliding your finger right or left turns volume up or down. I wish these controls included a way to skip forward a track, but the good news is that Google could theoretically add feature this with a software update.

What’s inside is a lot more interesting. Google packed in two 18mm tweeters and two 4.5-inch woofers, good for driving a lot of volume and bass. There are also six far-field microphones that did an excellent job of recognizing my voice when I was talking to the Home Max, even while the music was cranked up loud.

The last detail of note is hidden under the front cloth. There you’ll find four LED lights, just like the ones on the Home Mini. They light up in response to an “OK Google” command and turn orange and stay on while the mic is muted. Finally, they provide a visual indicator of the volume level when you’re adjusting it on the top touch strip. You won’t see the lights very often, but they do a good job providing visual cues when you need them.

Setup / Google Assistant

Setup for the Home Max is the same as Google’s other smart speakers. Once plugged in, just open up the Home app on your iOS or Android device and follow a few prompts to connect the speaker to your WiFi network. If it’s the first time you’ve set up a Home device, you’ll be asked to sign in to your Google account and train the speaker to recognize your voice. You can also add more users later by having them train the speaker; that way, it can distinguish between you and your significant other when you’re asking for calendar details or to play your playlists.

Once set up, the Home Max does everything its smaller stablemates can. The Google Assistant’s capabilities are well-established at this point. Check out our original Google Home review and our Home Mini review for more details, but suffice to say it can answer queries and searches, make voice calls, pull info like reminders and calendar items from your Google account, control smart-home devices and, of course, play music.

Audio quality

Excellent music performance is the entire reason for the Home Max’s existence, and it largely delivers. Once you’ve linked supported music services (including Spotify, Pandora and Google Play Music), you can just ask the Google Assistant to play any song or album that pops into your head. The Assistant is also smart enough to search your library for playlists or stations you’ve saved. I was able to tell it to stream Discover Weekly from Spotify or a number of different stations on Google Music.

The Google Assistant doesn’t support nearly as many music services as Sonos, but the good news is that any app that works with Google Cast can be used as a remote to send music straight to the speaker. It also supports Bluetooth, which isn’t nearly as elegant, but it’s a good workaround if you just can’t give up Apple Music.

Enough about music services, though. The big question is: How’s the audio quality? In a word, excellent. It’s the best-sounding smart speaker on the market by a wide margin. Its size and overall performance reminds me of the Sonos Play:5 — the Max isn’t quite as good, but it’s also $100 cheaper and includes built-in voice-assistant features. The bass response is excellent, highs are clear without being shrill and it’s very, very loud. Pushing the volume above 60 percent really shows off the speaker’s chops. Where a smaller smart speaker like the Sonos One can start to struggle, the Max never distorts or loses any bass.

This is doubly true when pairing two Home Max speakers in stereo. On its own, the speaker outputs in stereo when horizontal or mono when standing up, but two speakers greatly extend the soundstage. It also makes things even louder, which is entirely unnecessary (at least for my needs). Turning the speakers up also highlighted how good the Home Max’s microphones are. It picked up my “OK Google” command phrase no matter how loud things were, something that the Alexa-enabled Sonos One had a lot more trouble with.

The Home Max may get seriously loud, but it’s impressive even at lower volumes. It’s not that often that I listen to music on speakers of this caliber, positioned in a way that I can really experience stereo effects. It even works with my turntable, despite the fact that the speakers had to take the input from one speaker and then split and stream the channels wirelessly. There was a tiny bit of latency between when I dropped the needle and started the music, but that didn’t really matter because the speakers stayed in sync without issue.

Google has supported multiroom audio for a few years now, and it works smoothly on the Home Max without. You can connect multiple Google Home devices together; Chromecast hardware works with multiroom audio as well. Finally, if you have multiple Google Home speakers, you can talk to one to control others in the network. For example, you can say “turn down the living room speaker volume” to any Home device, and it’ll know what you’re talking about. The Home Max provides a stellar music experience, particularly when in a stereo pair. Of course, at $800, there’s no excuse for anything less.

One last note on audio: Google doesn’t let users tune their speakers to the room, like Sonos does with its Trueplay technology. But the company does have built-in, machine-learning-assisted algorithms that automatically modify output to best fit where you place the Home Max. Google calls it Smart Sound, and the first feature that falls under that category is Room EQ. This specifically adjusts for bass output — lots of people put their speakers in corners or against walls, which typically amplifies bass. Room EQ adjusts this to even things out. It’s all done automatically, and the speaker readjusts every time it is moved. There’s no way to turn it on or off, so I can’t really tell how much it affects the sound, unfortunately. But the bottom line is that the speaker sounds great.

The competition

Google’s Home Max is a bit of an outlier right now. The Sonos One is an excellent, music-focused smart speaker, but it’s much smaller. Its performance is impressive given its size (and $200 price), and at lower volume levels it holds up well. But once you push things past 50 percent, the Home Max asserts its superiority.

Still, for $400 you could get a stereo pair of Sonos One speakers, or just take two and distribute them at different points in your house for multiroom audio. Another option would be buying two of the Sonos Play:1 speakers, which now cost $150 each but don’t have voice control. From there, you can add an Amazon Echo Dot so you can control the speakers with your voice. That’ll give you a voice-controlled music setup with solid performance for less money. Of course, it’s a bit more complex.

If you’re really focused on quality, the Sonos Play:5 is another excellent option. It’s more expensive and it doesn’t have voice control built-in, but it sounds magnificent. And if you prefer the Google Assistant to Alexa, Sonos says it’s adding support soon. If you’re an Apple fan, AirPlay 2 is coming as well. Again, it’s a bit more complicated a solution than just buying a Home Max and calling it a day, but it’s worth considering.

Apple’s HomePod isn’t out yet, and it’s primarily designed for Apple Music, but it sounded great in a brief demo earlier this year. That said, Apple still hasn’t said when it’s coming out, and besides, we’ll need to test it for a longer period of time before we weigh in on how much we like it. If you’re an Apple fan, you might want to wait for the first wave of reviews.

Finally, there are many pairs of incredible bookshelf speakers on the market that you can get for around the price of a single Home Max speaker. Add a Chromecast Audio and a Home Mini and you’ll have basically the same features as the Home Max, with better stereo performance to boot.

Wrapup

At $399, the Google Home Max will not sell as well as the standard Home or Home Mini. But many people listen to music on those devices, and a subset of them certainly would like to combine the smarts of the Google Assistant while also upgrading their home audio setup. The Home Max fits that bill. It’s incredibly easy to set up, it can do everything that the other Google Home devices can do and, most important, it sounds excellent.

There are other speakers in this price range that perform better, but the Google Home Max doesn’t have any competitors that can match all of its features. It’s simply the best-sounding smart speaker available right now. Though the Home Max’s price will be a dealbreaker for some, music fans should definitely take note.

‘Dragon Quest Builders’ arrives on Switch in February

Square Enix’s Minecraft­-style construction game Dragon Quest Builders is coming to Nintendo Switch on February 9 next year. The game — which was released last year on PS4, PS3 and Vita — sees players gather materials, reconstruct towns and fight monsters through a sprawling RPG. It’s all very Minecraft-esque, but offers a more structured gameplay with a proper storyline — in this instance, restoring the world of Alefgard.

The main draw of its arrival to Switch is, of course, being able to play on the go, but the console’s version also offers some exclusive experiences and items, including the ability to gather rare crafting materials for a wider range of customization options. A sequel, Dragon Quest Builders 2, will add co-op play, but there’s no word on a release date for that yet.

Source: Nintendo

LEDVANCE Introduces New HomeKit-Enabled Sylvania Smart+ Filament Light Bulb

LEDVANCE today announced the launch of a new HomeKit-enabled Sylvania Smart+ Soft White A19 Filament Bulb, the first filament bulb to come equipped with HomeKit.

Filament bulbs are often preferred to standard bulbs in lights where the design of the bulb itself is featured. The new Sylvania bulb allows customers who are looking for a retro filament bulb to get that look without sacrificing smart functionality.

The Sylvania Smart+ Soft White A19 Filament Bulb provides up to 650 lumens of 2700K light, equivalent to a 40W bulb, and it can be dimmed.

Sylvania’s HomeKit-enabled light bulbs work with the Home app and can integrate with other HomeKit-enabled products. They also respond to Siri commands and can be added to scenes and other automations.

The new Sylvania Smart+ Soft White A19 Filament Bulb can be pre-ordered on Amazon.com for $31.99 starting today, with orders set to ship out in the spring of 2018.

LEDVANCE’s Sylvania Smart+ Indoor Flex Strip Full Color ($59.99) and the Soft White A19 Bulb ($25.99), both of which feature HomeKit support, are also now available for purchase on Amazon.

Tag: HomeKit
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Plex Launches Miniaturized Music App for Mac and Windows Called ‘Plexamp’

This week Plex announced Plex Labs, a new internal section of the company that focuses on sharing in-depth Medium posts, community ideas, and passion projects created by Plex engineers. The first such project is called “Plexamp,” a macOS and Windows app that pulls from your existing Plex music library and accumulates it all into one miniaturized interface (via The Next Web).

The Winamp-inspired app works similar to a native Mac app (so media keys and notifications are supported), plays “just about any music format,” can remote control other Plex players and vice-versa, and supports offline playback. More in-depth features include Spotlight-like search for your entire Plex music library, gapless playback, soft transitions when pausing, resuming and changing tracks, and loudness leveling to normalize playback volume across different albums.

In terms of the interface, the app’s default setting appears to be around the size of a miniaturized iTunes player, and it features four different sizes in total “including one that hides the app entirely.” Plexamp’s minimalism extends into its buttons, which appear when needed and otherwise stay hidden. Plex co-founder Elan Feingold mentioned that the Plexamp team forced itself to think small in terms of the app’s footprint, so it could act as a miniature companion to Plex’s larger apps.

It all started over a beer — as most great things do — re-envisioning what a tiny and powerful music player might look like in 2017. The most classic and beloved small audio player, Winamp, was first released almost exactly TWENTY years ago. Written in a low-level language, it ran on Windows, and was limited to playing files on the local (or networked) filesystem.

Plex, on the other hand, provides a best-in-class client/server model, an extremely metadata rich library, is highly portable, and gives you access to your entire music collection from anywhere in the world; we wanted to pair this with a similarly excellent music player. Literally the only requirement we had was “small”; Plex has plenty of bigger apps already, but nothing that sits unobtrusively on a desktop, beguiling and delighting. We even forced ourselves to limit the design to a single simple window.

The app also turns albums into art with SoundPrints and visualizers, which change with each album played. The main focus of the app is said to be the discovery of songs within your existing music library, with library stations that track popularity, rating, and listening history to curate music.

These stations include “Library Radio” that picks songs across your entire song catalog, and “Time Travel Radio” that begins with the earliest released music in your library and works its way forward. “Artist Radio” starts with a specific artist and then “explores more corners of your library” within similar genres as the original musician.

Those interested can download Plexamp for free on the Plex Labs webpage, but to use the app you’ll need to sign up for a Plex account. Feingold noted that the app might have a few “rough edges” due to its creation by just a handful of Plex employees in their spare time.

Tag: Plex
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