When we first caught a glimpse of these speakers, they were called SoundStage. In the US, they still are… however, because Philips has trademarked the name in the UK, Monster had to come up with a new name, eventually settling on StreamCast.
The three speakers in the range are: S1 (£200), S2 (£300), S3 (£400). What sets Monster’s speakers apart from other multi-room brands is that music can be streamed to them from both wi-fi and Bluetooth.
By using Bluetooth, it means users can stream any audio they want from a PC, Mac or mobile device, including the recently-launched Apple Music streaming service. This means Monster is the first multi-room speaker brand to be compatible with the Apple service, although Sonos has confirmed it will support it by the end of the year.
When songs are streamed to the speakers over Bluetooth, the first speaker will receive the Bluetooth signal and then send it to other speakers in the group over wi-fi, for a more stable and higher-quality connection.
StreamCast speakers will also support high-resolution audio up to 24-bit/192kHz when streaming over wi-fi.
