A powerful little speaker pumps out soulful electronic music on the table as Noel Lee gleefully pours a glass of ice water it. The SuperStar BackFloat manages to continue functioning, pleasantly bumping away while water droplets and ice cubes bounce off its black exterior with every beat.
Lee is the founder of Monster, a company once known for crafting Beats headphones and, before that, for expensive audio cables. This past weekend, Lee was in Seattle to show off his company’s latest wireless speaker line (and to speak at MindCamp). The Monster SoundStage is a multi-room speaker system using both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi that looks to compete with Sonos. But the star in Monster’s lineup is the waterproof BackFloat.
“You can see the sound,” Lee gloats. “It’s overcoming the weight of the water, so you can see how powerful it is.”
While the founder’s card says Head Monster, Lee is a little bit like the patriarch of his family-owned business. Monster started in a garage as a company selling high-end audio cables when stores were giving low-quality cables away for free. He talked salespeople and audiophiles alike into the idea that better cables could result in better sound.
Today, he dreams up ideas for new audio products, coming up with everything from the internal elements to the catchphrases.
“It’s sound you can see,” he says, turning to his business manager. “That should be the slogan.”
Monster has seen success replacing technical details with an appeal to ego in its advertising. Some people see Monster’s $100 HDMI cable as a needless markup for a product that functions the same as a $7 equivalent, but the emotional appeal of luxury electronics helped Monster sell the world on Beats by Dr. Dre.
Lee is partially responsible for the craze of big, gaudy headphones seen on athletes, rappers, college kids and rock stars. Monster was Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine’s original partner for Beats, but the musicians and Monster parted ways in 2012. Dre and Iovine kept Beats, first as a partnership with HTC and eventually selling to Apple in 2014. Monster kept Lee’s engineering know-how and love of audio.
Most would agree that Dre and Iovine came out on top, and Lee has made it clear that he isn’t happy with how it turned out.
Today, Lee claims ownership of everything Monster makes, sketching ideas for both the engineering and design aspects of new products. He wants everything to sound better.
“We call him the golden ear,” business manager Robin Lee said. “People look to Monster to see where the trends are going, since [Lee] is the one that created the biggest headphone market.”
While Beats undeniably set trends, it remains to be seen if Monster can maintain that reputation.
The BackFloat is one of only a handful of powerful yet waterproof speakers on the market, but it’s not going to turn many heads. Sure, the construction is solid and the sound is loud enough to hear even as a truck rolls by on a busy Seattle street. But it doesn’t set a trend like Beats did. The Jambox by Jawbone is the obvious trendsetter in the space, with plenty of copies available on Amazon.
Monster’s new Bluetooth earbuds are also innovative, sticking so snuggly to the side of the head that users can wear a helmet over them. Again, it’s a welcome improvement to an existing product type, but it’s not the trendsetter that Beats was. That doesn’t worry the Head Monster.
“We’re an old-school company,” Noel Lee said. “New school is building the business to sell the business.” Instead, he wants to build stuff he can call his own, products that he creates.
The latest push for Monster is mobile devices. The company has a full lineup of speakers and headphones, but Monster is also pushing battery packs, cables and transmitters for tablets and phones.
The company’s DNA headphones, a triangular take on the chunky over-the-ear cans, were awarded best sound by CNET. They even have the Seattle Seahawks’ Marshawn Lynch to help sell them.
Monster’s USB battery banks are thin enough to fit in a wallet, making them some of the smallest batteries on the market. And their audio cables are still as solid as ever.
Even the new home speakers Monster is showing off on its press tour are pretty advanced. The company has an app that draws in music stored on all devices on your network, so you can play your friends’ music just as easily as your own. It also adds a Bluetooth connection to make connecting devices easier, while still retaining the ability to stream high-quality sound over WiFi like its main competitor in the space, Sonos.
The BackFloat is $149, while the SoundStage comes in $100, $200 or $300 models. The price is justified by high-quality components and good sound, but may be too much for consumers used to $20 speakers. And customers might already associate the company with its overpriced cables.
Maybe waterproofing the Bluetooth speaker will make it the must-have item for the summer and bring Bluetooth speakers even further into the world. Or maybe super-thin earbuds will get more people to try out Bluetooth headphones even when they aren’t running. Whatever’s next in audio, Monster is sure to be there, even if it’s not setting the trend anymore.
