What Is Amazon Echo Studio and How Does It Work?

This third-generation Echo smart speaker offers a stereo experience

By
S.E. Slack
S. E. Slack
S.E. Slack
Senior Strategy & Editorial Director, Lifewire.com
  • California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo
S.E. Slack has 30+ years' experience writing about technology. She has authored 12 books, thousands of articles, and worked for IBM and Microsoft.
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Updated on October 2, 2019

If you're looking for a single smart speaker that works with Dolby Atmos to provide a powerful listening experience, look no farther than Echo Studio. It's the first smart speaker to offer 3D audio, which makes it highly appealing to music lovers.

What Is Echo Studio?

Echo Studio is Amazon's answer to old-school, high-end stereos for audiophiles. At its core, it's an Amazon Echo that lets you use Alexa to perform a variety of tasks. On top of that, Amazon added in midrange drivers and a tweeter and woofer that are driven by Class D amplifiers. It can be connected to the Echo Sub to add a powerful subwoofer for a comprehensive listening experience that rivals some of the best-sounding smart speakers in the business.

Echo Studio was created to take advantage of Amazon's Music HD service and compete with similar high-end smart speakers on the market.

How Does Echo Studio Work?

The Echo Studio works like any other Echo speaker: Alexa is built-in with seven microphones and the classic blue LED ring that changes colors according to various activities. The microphones provide automatic sound tuning while the entire speaker automatically analyzes the acoustics of the room to fine-tune playback.

A badge appears in the Alexa or Amazon Music HD app to help you identify tracks that use Dolby Atmos or MPEG-6.

You can connect Echo Studio to the Fire TV Cube, Fire TV Stick, or Fire TV to watch your favorite shows and movies in stereo. You can also pair it with a second Echo Studio for an even bigger sound.

The Echo Studio also includes a microphone off button to disconnect microphones, and you can maintain your privacy by deleting your voice recordings.

Technical Details to Know

Competitors of Echo Studio include Sonos Play:5, Google Home Max, and Apple HomePod. It's fairly small and lightweight, coming in at 8.1-inches high and 6.9-inches in diameter, and weighs just under eight pounds. The Dolby Atmos processing helps transform stereo tracks and ensures it can play real 3D Dolby Atmos content plus MPEG-H and MPEG-6 content, including Sony 360 Reality Audio.

MPEG-H is a group of international standards from the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG). The organization develops standards for coding in digital audio, video, 3D graphics, and other data.

Echo Studio includes Zigbee and Bluetooth connectivity, three 2-inch midrange speakers, one 1-inch tweeter, and one 5.25-inch woofer with bass aperture. Audio input is via a combination 3.5mm/mini-optical Toslink. Dual-band Wi-Fi supports 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac networks, both 2.4 and 5 GHz.

A view of Amazon Echo Studio internal parts

Echo Studio supports the following streaming music services:

Where to Find This Product

Amazon Echo Studio is available at Amazon.com and Amazon-affiliated retailers.

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