I’ve spent the last few weeks living with a variety of audio gear from German audiophile brand Raumfeld. Currently up for review is the Raumfeld One M – a single box 2.1 audio system that’s perfect for small to medium-size spaces like kitchens, offices, dens, and bedrooms.
The One M offers a clean and modern design that looks great in just about any space. It’s hard to tell from the image above, but it’s got a dramatically sloped design that makes it stand out from other boxy speakers, and its wood and aluminum construction quality appears to be excellent.
Measuring in at 16.1″ (w) x 7.9″ (d) x 7.2″ (h), it’s small enough to fit in a good deal of places, but still substantial. Inside the cabinet, you’ll find a five speaker setup, with two 2.6″ midrange drivers, two 1″ tweeters, and a 5.1″ downward-firing subwoofer. Power comes from a clean and powerful 120-watt Class-D amp.
Like Raumfeld’s other speakers, the One M streams music wirelessly over a Wi-Fi network for optimal fidelity and range. You can either use your existing home network, or isolate the music traffic from your other network traffic with Raumfeld’s $59 add-on wireless expander.
Connecting the One M to your network is simple. Just install the Raumfeld app on your iOS or Android device, and follow a few simple on-screen instructions. The whole process takes less than a minute. The Raumfeld app supports direct playback of music stored locally on your wireless device, and can also play music stored on remote NAS drives or a directly-attached USB drive.
Music can also be streamed from a variety of online services, including Spotify Premium, Rhapsody, Tidal, and Soundcloud. Raumfeld is also working on integration with Google Cast, which will provide broad support for streaming from other Android apps. Sadly, there’s no support for Apple AirPlay at this point, so keep that in mind. The app can also control Raumfeld speakers in multiple rooms, streaming different music to individual speakers or create zones of multiple speakers.
Sound quality is exceptional, pushing out impressive, distortion-free sound, with an impressive amount of volume for its size. As I sit here writing this, I have the One M sitting on my kitchen counter, and it’s filling the 20 x 15 room with enough volume to wake the neighbors. But this speaker doesn’t just shine when cranked up to 11. It’s also clean and crisp at low volumes.
While many of today’s speakers are built with pop and dance music in mind, Raumfeld set out to create a speaker that would play all genres of music well. Rock and roll is notoriously hard to get right, often distorting the vocals, or with its low-end overemphasized. No such worries here. I dusted off my collection of Rolling Stones, Ozzy Osbourne, Red Hot Chili Peppers and even a little G’NR to see how it would perform, and all I can say is that the One M truly rocks. Two minutes later, I was listening the dulcet tones of Mozart’s Sonata in D Major for Two Pianos, and I thought I was sitting in a concert hall in the front row. From pop to hip-hop to electronic, the One M handled everything I could throw at it with aplomb.
And while I don’t generally recommend adding digital post-processing to music, I highly recommend enabling the Stereo Widening feature on this system. It adds tremendous depth and width to music without seeming artificial, and only further enhances the overall listening experience.
You may not have heard of Raumfeld yet, but they clearly know what they’re doing when it comes to speaker design. I’ve absolutely loved the sound quality of each and every one of their products I’ve tested to date, and once again offer my strong recommendation here. The Raumfeld One M is an extraordinarily good sounding speaker that can turn any room into an arena, a dance club, or a symphony hall. You can order the Raumfeld One M from Amazon for $499(USD).
At last year's CES, Google announced that the Cast tech that allows you to beam video with a Chromecast would be available to audio as well. This meant that companies were free to put the feature in new devices alongside AirPlay and Bluetooth connect...