The home audio landscape has undergone quite a change in recent times. Where the living room hi-fi once ruled the roost, the expensive and carefully matched components are now dead silent and the once proud tower speakers have been repurposed as stands for photo frames or vases. Music lovers seem quite happy to accept an often huge drop in sonic quality for the convenience and wireless ease of the small Bluetooth speaker. But the folks over at Line 6 are looking to breathe new life into those dusty stereo system circuits with a new addition to the AMPLIFi range called the TT.
The AMPLIFi series from Line 6 launched back in January with two hybrid amp/speaker systems that got some tone and functionality expansion assistance from a proprietary app. This was followed shortly after by a connected floor effects unit called the FX100 which allowed players to take AMPLIFi out on the road. Now the AMPLIFi TT guitar tone processor and Bluetooth audio streamer brings the system into the home, office, studio or campus.
TT stands for table-top, and the compact unit has been designed to turn any powered speaker or home theater system into a combo guitar amp. The player plugs the guitar in via a 6.4 mm instrument input to the front, where there's also a headphone jack for low latency monitoring, a Drive knob, three EQ knobs, reverb and a guitar/master volume dial.
The TT can be wired to a home hi-fi system using the RCA outputs at the back, cabled to powered speakers via the 6.4 mm jacks or hooked up to a home theater setup using the TOSLINK optical outputs. Users can even connect the TT to a big guitar amp via the unit's amp out port, and living room jams or home studio compositions can be recorded over USB to a Mac or PC computer. Or the unit can just be used to stream music from a mobile device to non-Bluetooth home entertainment systems.
There are four distinct tones built in, but the system's real power lies in the AMPLIFi Remote app for iOS or Android. A smartphone or tablet running the app is paired with the TT over Bluetooth and gives players access to more than 70 amp models, over 20 speaker cabs and 100+ guitar effects to fine-tune the tone. There are 100 included presets and up to eight effects can be used at the same time.
Using a Wi-Fi connection, the smart device can also connect to a constantly expanding database of guitar and amp tones in the cloud, allowing players to tap into a library of almost 100,000 tones created by AMPLIFi users. The app can also match the magic tone from favorite tracks or artists and make it available for playback through the TT.
The AMPLIFi TT is available now for a recommended retail price of US$349.99, though the street price will likely be much less.
Product page: AMPLIFi TT
