New Bose system stores preferences, selects music

With the digitisation of the world's entertainment content underway at warp speed, it seems logical that high-end audio system manufacturers should add new functionality to differentiate their wares from the MP3 jukebox functionality now becoming ubiquitous. On cue, Bose has released two new Lifestyle home entertainment systems that store, organise and select music, taking into account the preferences of up to nine household members, with the ability to expand the system to up to fourteen zones throughout the home. Interestingly, Bose has chosen to improve the convenience and usability of the system, not the quality of the sound - Bose's usual hallmark. It's an important breakthrough that "removes the barriers between the listening and the equipment."

U-Music intelligent playback system

The brains behind the new Bose intelligent playback system (available in the new Lifestyle 38 and 48 home entertainment systems) is called uMusic.

UMusic digitally stores an entire music collection, and then learns a user's listening preferences based on likes, dislikes, even mood. It then prioritises a music collection automatically, without the need for charts, menus or manually creating and managing playlists.

The uMusic system stores up to 200 hours of music in the Lifestyle 38 system and up to 340 hours in the Lifestyle 48 system. As each CD is being stored, the uMusic system attaches detailed information to each song from its embedded database.

Like Apple's iTunes, the database recognises the album and adds the title, artist and the name of each track. The database also adds a number of other attributes, including the genre of the album, the artist's roots and influences and even subtle characteristics like mood and tone are identified. The accuracy and depth of these song profiles are ensured using databases from two leading providers of descriptive music information, covering over 500,000 individual CD titles.

As with other systems, it is possible to search for a specific song or CD, but it is the uMusic system's unique ability to learn a user's individual listening preferences, and then select and play back tracks with similar attributes which make it very useful.

All of this is done automatically, as the user stores their CDs in the system. And with every choice made, the user's preferences are further refined and evolved, with up to nine different user profiles able to be developed.

The Lifestyle 38 and 48 system's remote control is completely intuitive, with commands that emulate common listening habits. For example, "+" indicates a strong preference for a song, while "-" signals a strong dislike. "Skip" tells the uMusic not to play the track now but the listener may still want to listen in the future, while "encore" indicates to the system you want to hear music similar to the track currently playing, and so forth.

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