By Patrick Avenell
SYDNEY, NSW: Canohm, the Melbourne based distributors best known for its TV and AV mounting systems, is now distributing the Conran brand of iDocks, with the first two products unveiled yesterday.
This English brand is named for British designing knight Sir Terence Conran, a contemporary renaissance man who is also dabbles in restaurants, literature and architecture.
With the actual audio performance engineered by Q Acoustics, a leading British company, and with Conran’s nouveau elegance adorning the speaker, this docking station for iPads, iPhones and iPods is intended to change the way consumers consider the whole docking category.
To commence the introduction of Conran Audio, Canohm general manager of sales, Robert Costello, actually pondered aloud whether the world needs another iPod dock. He argues that we do, as this product is a response to evolution that Apple’s iRange has undergone since the launch of the first Classic in 2001.
Now more portable in general, and with two new ranges to accommodate (the various iPhones and the iPad), Costello believes that this dock, with its Bluetooth streaming and multiple docking rests, is more advanced than the traditional plug and play iPod docks that have saturated the market over the last decade.
Costello, however, did acknowledge that Conran is not the first to enable wireless streaming to a dock, with both Creative and Pioneer releasing products with comparable features last year.
In addition to having Bluetooth playback, the new Conran dock also features six preset equalisers (kitchen, lounge, study, bedroom, open plan and normal), USB connectivity and auxiliary input. There are two colours available at launch: black and white. The RRP is $549.
The new Conran Audio iDock.
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