MSRP: £499.00
What is the Cabasse Stream One?
One of the more unusual aspects of design as a concept is how we subconsciously become used to an object being a certain shape because the technology that originally created it demanded that it adopt that shape. The simplified diagram for a car to this day is the classic ‘three box’ saloon shape. This shape didn’t come about by accident. With an engine mounted longitudinally, designers wound up with a box for the engine, one for people and one for their luggage. Form followed function. When transverse mounting became possible, cars began to change shape with shorter bonnets and the hatchback began to subsume the third box too. Now, in 2015 an electric car doesn’t need anything more than a single ‘box’- but tradition means that a Tesla or Nissan Leaf is still inherently car shaped.
In audio, the form factor of many devices - but especially one box systems - was shaped by two different factors. First up, Hi-Fi separates are (in the main) the width they are because 430mm is the width of a turntable. They then tended towards flat front panels or top panels because somewhere in the chassis, a CD drive had to be fitted and accessed. While a small number of companies designed something groovy and bespoke, most brands had to make do with stock parts. Like cars, in 2015, CD drives are strictly optional. Turntables, while refusing to die, are hardly standard equipment either. If a brand wants to, it can make something look completely different, there's nothing stopping them.
And making things look completely different is a bit of a party piece for Cabasse. The French speaker brand is most famous for their concentric driver speakers that place drivers on axis and frequently in spherical housings, culminating in the splendidly bonkers La Sphere flagship. What you see here is Cabasse making a move into the all in one system category with the Stream One. It looks pleasingly different from the rest of the field but does it deliver?
In audio, the form factor of many devices - but especially one box systems - was shaped by two different factors. First up, Hi-Fi separates are (in the main) the width they are because 430mm is the width of a turntable. They then tended towards flat front panels or top panels because somewhere in the chassis, a CD drive had to be fitted and accessed. While a small number of companies designed something groovy and bespoke, most brands had to make do with stock parts. Like cars, in 2015, CD drives are strictly optional. Turntables, while refusing to die, are hardly standard equipment either. If a brand wants to, it can make something look completely different, there's nothing stopping them.
And making things look completely different is a bit of a party piece for Cabasse. The French speaker brand is most famous for their concentric driver speakers that place drivers on axis and frequently in spherical housings, culminating in the splendidly bonkers La Sphere flagship. What you see here is Cabasse making a move into the all in one system category with the Stream One. It looks pleasingly different from the rest of the field but does it deliver?
What does the Stream One do?
The Cabasse is an all in one system that offers, UPnP streaming at resolutions up to 24/96, Internet radio, Spotify Connect, Deezer, Bluetooth, USB ‘A’ connection for reading sticks and drives and a conventional analogue input. These are then motivated by an amplifier that has an output of 2x10w and 2x 20w. This in turn drives the on-board compliment of drivers. These consist of a pair of coaxial drive units that feature a 2.9cm tweeter mounted in the axis of a 8cm mid bass driver. Around the back (and the only driver you can actually see) is a 17cm mid bass driver that apparently receives a stereo signal from the amplifier. The grill that covers the coaxial units is fixed so I have no idea what they look like.
The way that Cabasse has arranged these drivers is interesting and makes the Stream One rather adaptable. The chassis can be placed on the ‘thin’ end where the inputs are, which makes it tall but relatively shallow. You can alternatively place it ‘flat’ on the ground and this makes it rather shorter but deeper. Finally, when in the upright position, you can wall mount it too. This makes the Stream One a fairly flexible friend and this flexibility makes itself felt in other ways too.
The way that Cabasse has arranged these drivers is interesting and makes the Stream One rather adaptable. The chassis can be placed on the ‘thin’ end where the inputs are, which makes it tall but relatively shallow. You can alternatively place it ‘flat’ on the ground and this makes it rather shorter but deeper. Finally, when in the upright position, you can wall mount it too. This makes the Stream One a fairly flexible friend and this flexibility makes itself felt in other ways too.
While the specifications of the Cabasse are not unusual for a product of this nature, the details make it more unusual and potentially more versatile. The Bluetooth implementation is Apt-x which is welcome but it also features the NFC ‘touch to play’ functionality that - rather unusually - actually works on the Cabasse. The USB connection can play files from a stick or drive which is normal enough but if you want, the Cabasse can then act as a DNLA server and share these files around which is quite handy if you have more than one of them. As a final rather specialised feature is the ability to control specific lighting products via the control app - although exactly what products fall into this category this is a bit of a mystery.
What’s good about the Stream One?
As well as this useful spec sheet, Cabasse has been hard at work on their control app. Products of this nature live or die on their control software and for the first few months of its life, the Stream One and other members of the family suffered due to an app that wasn’t that slick. The good news is that over Christmas an all new app was launched and this is fast, reliable and rather swish. If you have an Apple device, you can look forward to excellent performance. If you are an Android user, this app has yet to update but I didn’t find it too bad during testing.
I also like the look and design. Placed, ‘flat’, the Cabasse looks elegant and a little bit different from the pack. The chassis is made out of plastic but it manages to feel solid and well assembled. There was some comment from two entirely different and unconnected visitors that it looks a little like the robots from *Batteries Not Included but this is going to be a matter of personal taste and whether your repertoire of 80s films is up to snuff. The pebble shaped remote that Cabasse supplies is not the most solid feeling device that I’ve ever encountered but it looks nice, is harder to lose than credit card style ones and has useful range.
The Cabasse looks elegant and a little bit different from the pack.
What is not so good about the Stream One?
The drawbacks to the Cabasse are more sins of omission rather than problems with what it does do. Given that the app is best when used via Apple products, the lack of AirPlay is slightly annoying as Apple lags behind in their Bluetooth implementation - presumably in favour of it. This means that streaming a lossless service like Tidal to the Stream One would depend on having an Apt-X source available. The absence of any digital audio input means that connecting a TV and using the Cabasse as a boost for that audio is going to rely on the analogue connections that many sets don’t have.
The other gripe is something that more companies than Cabasse are guilty of. The Stream One has no display and is solely reliant on a solitary LED to tell you input and status. In some ways, not having a display is not the end of the world - after all, track information is available on the app - but committing colours to memory to know what input you are on and having no volume level indicator is a piece of minimalism too far for me, as you can receive a lively surprise when you first select a track depending on what the unit was last doing.
How was it tested?
As a standalone unit, the Cabasse was parked on a Quadraspire QAVX rack and installed on my network which meant it could access my Western Digital MyBook and an outside internet line. Bluetooth testing was carried out via Motorola Moto X 2014 while app control was largely carried out via my iPad 3. Material used included lossless and high-res FLAC, Spotify Connect and Tidal via Bluetooth. Some internet radio testing was also undertaken.
What does the Stream One sound like over UPnP?
Having carried out the fairly painless setup via the app, the Stream One found my library easily enough and rendered it as I’d expect to see it on my resident equipment. There is plenty to like about how the Cabasse makes music although quite a bit depends on how you place it. With the speaker mounted in the ‘tall’ position, the top end is a little clearer but quite a bit of the bass and impact is taken away. While the ‘flat’ position has slightly less top end, the greater heft in the midrange and bass is worth the trade off. As such, I kept the Cabasse flat for critical listening.
So installed and with Public Service Broadcasting’s Inform, Educate, Entertain selected, the Cabasse did many likeable things. This is a speaker that manages to sound big and powerful despite the fairly compact size. This is more than a sense of artificially extended bass though. Voices and tricky instruments like cellos and trumpets have a scale to them which smaller systems can often struggle with. There is also no shortage of real world headroom to the performance either and the Stream One should go plenty loud enough for most requirements.
So installed and with Public Service Broadcasting’s Inform, Educate, Entertain selected, the Cabasse did many likeable things. This is a speaker that manages to sound big and powerful despite the fairly compact size. This is more than a sense of artificially extended bass though. Voices and tricky instruments like cellos and trumpets have a scale to them which smaller systems can often struggle with. There is also no shortage of real world headroom to the performance either and the Stream One should go plenty loud enough for most requirements.
Cabasse makes little mention of DSP control and other electronic trickery in the design of the Stream One and this means that the sound lacks some of the disdain for the laws of physics that Naim’s mu-so possesses. It also tends to sound more like the sound is coming from a single point - which to be fair it is. There isn’t the sense of effortlessness that the mu-so has to its performance but the feeling of £300 sat in your back pocket you saved over buying the Naim might alleviate the disappointment a little.
With high-res material, the Cabasse does show that the voicing has been carried out with a view to keeping the Stream One sounding good with less than stellar material. With the incredible recording of Craig Armstrong’s It’s nearly tomorrow, the Cabasse is perfectly listenable but doesn’t really step-up over ‘normal’ lossless files. By the same token, the Stream One is very forgiving with less than perfect recordings.
With high-res material, the Cabasse does show that the voicing has been carried out with a view to keeping the Stream One sounding good with less than stellar material. With the incredible recording of Craig Armstrong’s It’s nearly tomorrow, the Cabasse is perfectly listenable but doesn’t really step-up over ‘normal’ lossless files. By the same token, the Stream One is very forgiving with less than perfect recordings.
This is a speaker that manages to sound big and powerful despite the fairly compact size.
How does the Stream One sound with other material?
Whatever limitations the Cabasse might have with high-res material, it is probably worth it for the performance with compressed signals. Spotify in particular sounds very good and is easy to listen to for long periods. I confess that I don’t find some aspects of Spotify Connect as slick as simply streaming it over AirPlay - you don’t get a ‘now playing’ display on the lock screen and I find that long playlists tend to get confused if the control source is left in standby for long periods of time - but these are not the fault of the Cabasse. If you are a Spotify subscriber - and with Tidal yet to bring a rival system into the market - the Stream One works like a charm.
So does the Bluetooth implementation. The Cabasse was unlucky in that it shared rack space with a product with the best Bluetooth implementation I’ve yet seen (and that will be reviewed in due course) but this doesn’t take away from the Stream One being very well thought out. The NFC system works properly and the range and stability of the signal is very good. The Moto X which has a very strong Bluetooth sender had a range constrained only by the size of the house and the comparatively weedy output of the iPad was still pretty good. Apt-X streaming of Tidal was entirely comparable with the same album streamed via UPnP.
I didn’t devote that much time to Internet radio testing because I generally waste an afternoon listening to conspiracy theorists yelling into microphones from isolated cabins in the American wilderness but the vTuner service of the Stream One had the stations I expected to be there all present and correct and the service was stable and free of dead links. Listening to really narrow bandwidth stuff does start to sound a bit thin and mushy but most ‘normal’ bitrate stuff - 128kpbs and above - is perfectly listenable.
So does the Bluetooth implementation. The Cabasse was unlucky in that it shared rack space with a product with the best Bluetooth implementation I’ve yet seen (and that will be reviewed in due course) but this doesn’t take away from the Stream One being very well thought out. The NFC system works properly and the range and stability of the signal is very good. The Moto X which has a very strong Bluetooth sender had a range constrained only by the size of the house and the comparatively weedy output of the iPad was still pretty good. Apt-X streaming of Tidal was entirely comparable with the same album streamed via UPnP.
I didn’t devote that much time to Internet radio testing because I generally waste an afternoon listening to conspiracy theorists yelling into microphones from isolated cabins in the American wilderness but the vTuner service of the Stream One had the stations I expected to be there all present and correct and the service was stable and free of dead links. Listening to really narrow bandwidth stuff does start to sound a bit thin and mushy but most ‘normal’ bitrate stuff - 128kpbs and above - is perfectly listenable.
Conclusion
Pros
- Smooth, room filling sound
- Useful specification
- Extremely stable and well implemented
Cons
- No AirPlay
- Little display info on the unit
- No Digital audio input
Cabasse Stream One Streaming System Review
The Cabasse finds itself in a market segment that is busy and getting busier. With network streaming now entirely mainstream, the demand for products of this nature is drawing more manufacturers in to try their hand. Even in this increasingly crowded arena though, the Stream One manages to make a compelling case for itself. The new app has tied together a product that already had all the basics in place. The Cabasse feels like a well thought out and clever product with some very nice touches and looks that shouldn’t scare the horses too much. If you need an all-in-one for audio at a competitive price, this is a very convincing solution to the problem.
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