When the COVID pandemic ended in 2022 and tens of millions of office employees began to return to their desks, many of us decided to take specific items that we acquired during remote work back into the office with us. High-end speakerphones are not a new segment, but when Beyerdynamic and Audeze decided to jump into the category — my ears perked up.
Like most professionals, I spend a fair amount of time in meetings and most of them involve conference calls with customers and team members who are spread around the country. In those types of situations, a dedicated speakerphone can really come in handy.
I have already reviewed two generations of Beyerdynamic Space Speakerphones and still use one on my desktop most of the time, but it’s a bit large and clunky to travel with.
Enter the Audeze Filter, a dedicated speakerphone with some innovative features, solid build quality, compact size, and ample battery life. It costs a bit more than some of its competitors at $249, but looks every bit the part and is easy to travel with.
Audeze has been one of the pivotal brands in the high-end headphone revolution offering some of the highest rated planar headphones in the world.
Unlike many of the high-end headphone brands, Audeze came to the realization a few years ago that it needed to differentiate its offerings and pivot to the medical, remote work, and gaming categories.
The gaming category, now represents over 40% of its annual sales and products like the Audeze Maxwell ($399 USD) sell out as soon as new inventory is available.
That success and focus on innovation, caught the attention of Sony resulting in the acquisition of the company in 2023.
The Audeze Filter is a combination of the wireless technology which makes the Maxwell unique, along with the planar technology that has allowed Audeze to engineer some of the best headphones in the world.
Audeze makes it very clear that the Filter is a speakerphone and not a Bluetooth speaker, which I found interesting as most other companies are touting their offerings as multi-function devices.
Audeze engineered the Filter for optimum call quality and noise reduction to accentuate the human voice in less than ideal meeting environments.
In the box
The Filter ships in a leather carry case with a magnetic flap to keep it secured inside. Also included is a Type-C to Type-C USB cable and a Type-C to Type-A adapter.
This facilitates connecting the Filter to Windows, MacOS, IOS, Android, and Linux operating systems for use with Zoom, Teams, Webex, Skype, Google Meet, Discord, Facetime, Facebook Messenger, and Slack meeting software.
Design
The unit is housed in an aluminum shell with the electronics, controls, and battery located in the left compartment and the speaker and microphones in the right compartment.
A single pin between the two compartments acts as the hinge. This allows Filter to be folded flat when not in use or aimed toward the user when in use.
The speaker has to be in the upright position to expose the USB port which oddly comes with a plug to protect it, while the speaker itself is exposed and more likely to collect dust or water.
The unit is roughly the same size as the iPhone 15 at 6″ x 3″ x 3/8″ (H x W x D) and weighs under 10 ounces.
It even tucks rather neatly in my pants pocket which is more than one can say for any other speakerphone on the market.
Internally, the Filter uses Bluetooth 5.0 technology with support for aptX, AAC and SBC.
In addition, DSP provides an AI-powered noise cancellation engine and allows the user to customise the level of noise reduction according to their needs.
The Filter paired easily to my iPhone and Android phones via AAC and aptX respectively. Bluetooth pairing, however, with Windows for use with Teams or Webex was less reliable than using the USB connection.
Having had no issues with Bluetooth connections on either phone, I have to assume that the issue was with my laptop, but it was nice to have the wired option for such cases.
Usability
Using the Filter can be super simple, but some settings may not be obvious. The buttons enable pairing, power on/off, volume up/down, mute, microphone beam forming, and noise cancellation settings.
I found it quick and simple to pair the unit, and the volume adjustment and mute were self-explanatory.
Beam forming is designed to allow for a tight focus towards a single speaker versus wider focus, which enables functionality in a group setting.
Noise cancellation options allow the user to adjust for mild, moderate, and high noise environments.
The Audeze Hub app offers even further fine tuning. Adjust the microphone distance setting, test beam forming and noise suppression, or make precision adjustments to the beam width and the noise cancelling level to find a perfect combination.
It is currently available for Android, iPhone, Windows (10/11) and MacOS.
The Filter uses a pair of microphones for beam forming that allow the user to sit as close as 25 cm or as far away as 3 meters. I found that it worked best when distances were kept within about 1.5 meters but it will indeed pickup at 3 meters with beam forming set to narrow as long as the speaker (person) remains within the beam.
With beam forming off, voices need to be within about 1 meter to be adequately audible to listeners on the other side of the call.
Noise reduction is handled by what Audeze calls AI-Based Intelligent Zero-Noise filtering, which is where its name comes from.
I tested with droning noises (air conditioner and server fans), vocal noises (TV on in the background), and random noises in a home office (leaf blower, lawn mower, doorbell). In all cases, the Filter was able to reduce sounds enough to keep them from being distracting or impacting the conversation.
Although no speakerphone can totally eliminate noises, I found Filter offered a pleasant mix of noise reduction and natural sounding vocals.
Volume is adjustable all the way up to “ludicrous mode” so don’t let the size fool you. Filter is capable of filling a room should the need arise. However, louder volumes and noisy environments requiring more ANC will impact battery life pretty significantly.
Our battery tests which were conducted over a series of weeks and multiple meetings at home, in the office, and on the road backed up Audeze’s claims that the Filter could deliver 15 hours on each charge. Our average was actually closer to 16 hours which is better performance than many wireless IEMs.
We mentioned earlier that Audeze expressly markets the Filter as a speakerphone and not a Bluetooth speaker.
There is a reason for that. The Filter cuts off most sound below 300Hz and the absence of bass information was intentional to focus on the human voice so that calls and meetings are delivered with the highest levels of fidelity and a clear lack of distortion. You can stream music to the Filter but you may not enjoy it in the same way.
Final Thoughts
What makes the Audeze Filter unique is its portability, build quality, intelligibility, and AI-powered noise reduction that works rather well when you need a call or meeting to be clear in conditions that might not be ideal.
The weight and battery life will appeal to those who genuinely require a device like this that can fit in a pocket and has to work when you need to join a call or run a meeting in a hotel room or trade show booth.
Is it worth the money? It has proven that so far and we suspect others will agree.
Where to buy: $249 at Amazon | Audeze
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