A lot of the talk heard around audio at #ces2017 earlier this month centered on things like sound bars, speakers and headphones. Cnet said “You could argue that, apart from the proliferation of Alexa speakers, there was a lack of any real innovation this year.”
I guess their audio editor didn’t get to spend time in the sound booth at our #DellExperience pictured below. If they had, they would have seen, and heard, the Innovation Awards Honoree Dell XPS 27 All-in-One (far left).
Hot Hardware called it “one of the fastest all-in-on PCs we’ve tested to date.” But the real innovation in this system isn’t speed – it’s sound.
Hopefully you read award-winning record producer Jack Joseph Puig’s guest post here about how he spent 18-months with our designers, developers, engineers to create the XPS 27’s sound. But you probably haven’t seen the system used like The Glitch Mob showed us at the #DellExperience:
That was one of my favorite parts of the press event we held. (Sorry Tom Holland, you’re just too young for me.) To see our product in use so creatively excites me, and hearing it really excited others who stopped by the event.
“More than the words they said, it was the facial expressions that conveyed ‘wow,’” said 20-year Dell audio veteran Doug Peeler who spent most of CES in that sound booth I mentioned. “You could see this emotion come over people when they would hear a song they liked and they would say ‘Man, it’s like I’m there.’”
So while the new XPS 27 AIO, and its soon-to-come Precision business sibling, crank sound to a whole new level, Peeler says it’s less about decibels and more about feeling the music.
“Factor in a 27-inch 4K touch display that can be laid flat, and you’ve got a spectacular all-in-one for artists, musicians or simply anyone who wants their content to both look and sound fantastic,” said Tom’s Guide when they named it “Best PC” in their CES 2017 Awards.
Those creators are who our team had top-of-mind during years of development that led to this system’s audio. Six years ago Dell and Waves Audio started working together to create some of the greatest sounding laptops, but a meeting with Puig at the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) event brought his vision for a professional audio system together with Dell’s.
“This is more like an actual reference monitor system that music producers use to make critical decisions on audio,” said Peeler.
Such decision makers in the media and entertainment industry often use sophisticated software programs that demand an optimized workstation. And that is why we’re adding the first-ever all-in-one (AIO) to our Precision lineup – the number one workstation in North America according to IDC Worldwide Workstation Tracker Q3 2016.
Precision 5720 AIO will have the same 10 speakers pumping out sound at 50W per channel and beautiful 4K Ultra HD (3840 x 2160) edge-to-edge touch display supporting 100 percent Adobe RGB color gamut as the XPS 27; but also more performance options with Intel Xeon processors, AMD Radeon Pro graphics capable of powering virtual reality and outstanding reliability with ISV certifications for top programs like AVID and SolidWorks, as well as leading security and manageability software.
That means you can run demanding, graphics-intensive applications like 3D rendering at the fastest speeds possible. And, if you’re a fan of the Linux operating system, you’ll be able to get that Precision 5720 preloaded with Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. Our “Project Sputnik” lead Barton George has more details on that in his blog.
You don’t have to be a professional creator to want to amplify your experience, however.
“Several self-described audiophiles that came through the booth at CES were surprised at how much better our system sounded compared to the iMac,” Peeler said.
Just how much better? Well, it’s two times louder and with up to 50 percent better bass than the iMac 27.
Want a closer look? Here’s a video overview of the XPS 27 AIO:
