“Beep” Whole-Home Wireless Audio Solution Is Basically Chromecast For Music

Chromecast is great. It lets you stream just about anything to your TV from the Internet, and it does so in a unique, simple, and brilliant way: instead of streaming directly from your smartphone or tablet, your device tells Chromecast to do the streaming. A group led by a pair of ex-Google employees has essentially done the same thing for audio that Chromecast does for video with its simple device called “Beep”.

Beep (or is it “a Beep”?) is a metal dial that connects directly to virtually any speakers in your home via 3.5mm AUX, RCA, or optical input and connects wirelessly to your WiFi network. You can use the Beep app on your smartphone to tell it to play music, and you can start it up simply by tapping the Beep device.

Beep

To pause, just tap it again, and you can twist the dial to turn the music up or down.

Your music will sync across your whole home, assuming you have a Beep connected to all your speakers. Further, you can set up groups of Beeps around the home to have more than one Beep network, if you will.

Beep

For now, you can either play the music directly stored on your iOS or Android smartphone or via your Pandora app with Beep, although support for more apps including Spotify, Rdio, and more are in the offing.

Beep will cost $149 when it launches this fall, but for now you can preorder one for just $99.