File this one under "Why has no one thought of its before?" And it packs a pretty good audio punch, based on the demo we got last week, thanks in part to a collaboration between Netgear and home audio powerhouse Harman Kardon. Mesh networks like Netgear's Orbi series are popular because they can blanket a home with strong Wi-Fi and eliminate dead zones. They consist of a router that you connect to your broadband gateway, and one or more satellite access points that you position around the house. Data hops from one satellite to the other and back to the router, with client devices automatically connecting to whichever access points can deliver the strongest signal.

The Google Home speaker is adding a bilingual Google Assistant feature. Hey, Google will be speaking your language more like you do if you're a bilingual home. The voice-activated Google Assistant inside Google Home smart speakers, Android smartphones and iPhones, too, will be able to recognize queries made in any pairing of English, German, French, Spanish, Italian and Japanese, with more languages to follow, and, assuming it works as promised, it will respond to requests in the language used for the question. The new feature, which Google claims as a first of its kind, began rolling out Thursday. . As Google explains, if you're listening for an answer in English, you can ask something along the lines of, "Hey Google, what's the weather like today?"

Google's Assistant is picking up the ability to speak with you in two languages without having to switch accounts. Now Google Home and Android smartphone owners will be able to speak in any two of the following languages: English, Spanish, French, German, Italian and Japanese. The Google Assistant will reply in the language of the query it's answering. The company first mentioned it was working on this feature in February, but there hadn't been an update on it for months. The new feature helps Google Assistant serve bilingual households, which make up an increasing percentage of American families.

Today, Sennheiser introduced the Momentum True Wireless earbuds, which provide stereo sound thanks to 7mm dynamic drivers. These earbuds have a four-hour battery life; the charging case holds an additional eight hours of capacity. They will be available starting in mid-November for $299.95. The Momentum True Wireless earbuds are compatible with smart assistants like Siri and Google Assistant. Two-mic beamforming helps make picking up your voice in a noisy room clearer -- this translates to better phone calls and interaction with voice assistants.

Fans of Sony's high-end audio products will soon be able to control what they listen to – using the sound of their voices. The Japanese firm has announced that users will be able to use Amazon's Alexa smart assistant to control its soundbar and wireless headphones. This will give them access to tens of thousands of skills built into the AI software, including asking to play music, hear the news, and control smart home devices. Owners of compatible hardware will need to install the latest firmware updates to enable the voice assistant. Sony has yet to confirm the exact headphone and soundbars models that will get the firmware update.

Most people on Earth can speak two or more languages, but voice-operated virtual assistants have always forced them to pick and use just one--at least until today. Google Assistant is now the first multilingual virtual assistant. Users can specify that they want listening done in two languages in the app's settings on their phone or Google Home smart speaker. Then, a person can call out requests or commands in either language. Yell "Hey Google, turn off the hallway light!" as you walk out the house, and darkness will fall.

Today, Google announced that its smart assistant is now bilingual. While Google Assistant could already understand multiple languages, now you can speak two languages interchangeably and Assistant will be able to follow what you're saying. Supported languages include any pairing of English, German, French, Spanish, Italian and Japanese. More languages will be added in the next few months. Google is also expanding the availability of its smart speaker Google Home Max.

Gartner has said that chatbots and virtual assistants are between two and five years away from mainstream adoption, while speech recognition will reach that point in the next two years. The latest Hype Cycle - Gartner's visual tool for showing how close developing technologies are to mainstream adoption - puts chatbots at the early innovation trigger stage, while virtual personal assistants have passed the peak of inflated expectations and are on their way down to the trough of disillusionment. Despite the gap between them on the Hype Cycle, Gartner forecasts that both chatbots and virtual assistants will reach the mainstream at a roughly similar time, shortly after speech recognition - which they add value to. "The effects of speech recognition can be seen on a daily basis," said analyst Matthew Cain. Speech-to-text applications have proliferated due to the adoption of chatbots and virtual personal assistants (VPAs) by businesses, and consumer adoption of devices with speech interactions including smartphones, gaming consoles and specifically, VPA speakers." Van Baker, research VP at Gartner, said, "Increasingly, behaviour and event triggers will enhance virtual assistants.

Google's big, premium Apple HomePod rival the Home Max is finally being released in the UK today, bringing Google Assistant to the high-end smart speaker market. Announced in October 2017 and on sale in the US since November, the Home Max joins Google's smaller Home and smallest Home Mini smart speakers as the big one. Google Assistant sorts voice commands, controls and questions exactly the same as Google's smaller smart speaker offerings, but the way it sounds couldn't be more different. The Home Max is relatively large box speaker, by smart speaker standards, with a white or black smooth plastic body and grey or charcoal coloured fabric front. In white and grey it's simple fabric front and rounded corners make the Home Max look a bit bland up next to a Sonos Play:5 or an Apple HomePod, but it might be easier to blend in with soft home furnishings.

Google's most expensive speaker option is finally available in the US. It's certainly taking the tech giant some time to release Home Max in markets outside North America, but it's at least making its way to more places around the globe -- it also arrived in Australia a few weeks ago. Mountain View created Home Max to be 20 times more powerful than the ordinary Home speaker, so it can fill even large rooms with high-fidelity sound and a deep, balanced bass thanks to its 4.5 -inch high- excursion woofers. It also features Google's new AI-powered technology called "Smart Sound," which allows sounds to adapt to the speaker's environment. Just place the device wherever you want, and it'll tune itself to deliver the best sound possible.