You can finally order your Amazon Echo speakers to turn up the bass next time you want to groove to Funkadelic.
The retailer said Monday that owners of Amazon Echo speakers like the Echo Dot or Echo Show can now ask their Internet-connected devices to adjust the bass, midrange, or treble when playing songs or movies via new Alexa-powered equalizer and other sound controls.
Alexa is Amazon’s voice-activated digital assistant that’s wired to work with Amazon’s family of Echo speakers as well as certain other third-party smart speakers. For instance, Amazon (AMZN) said that Polk Audio’s Polk Command Bar and the new Sonos Beam speaker are compatible with the new Alexa-powered sound controls.
The addition of new voice-activated audio tools comes amid fierce competition between Amazon and other companies like Google (GOOG) and Apple (AAPL) that offer their own digital assistants and smart speakers.
Amazon is pitching the new sound controls as an easier way for consumers to tweak sounds settings without having to manually adjust any knobs on the speakers or use audio editing software.
Amazon gave a short list of some of the ways people will be able to use the new sound control features with their Echo devices or other compatible smart speakers:
“Alexa, increase bass.”
“Alexa, increase bass in living room.”
“Alexa, set movie mode.”
“Alexa, set night mode on bedroom TV.”
“Alexa, set bass to three on sound bar.”
“Alexa, decrease treble.”
Third-party developers that want to incorporate the new Alexa-powered sound controls into their respective smart speakers will have to use Amazon’s new Smart Home Skill API and AVS API coder tools to do so.
“Consumers want simplicity and performance from their audio products,” Polk Audio brand director Michael Greco said in a statement. “By adding the EQ API and Alexa Voice Service (AVS) to the Polk Command Bar, our consumers can control sound bar functions like setting or changing sound modes (e.g. Movie, Music, Night and Sport), bass volume and volume levels with just their voice.”