Rob Waugh reviews the Riva Concert speaker

Riva Concert

£199, rivaaudio.co.uk 

Hirsute sound engineers devoted a lot of time in the Seventies to ensuring whooshing guitar solos wafted from speaker to speaker on classic rock albums. But their heroic struggle may have been entirely wasted. Most of the best-selling speakers of this Christmas have been mono, rather than stereo, whether they’re Bluetooth speakers or smart speakers. 

So Riva’s Alexa-enabled Concert definitely has a purpose in life. It offers its own not-really-stereo technology, called Trillium, which uses three drivers and three radiators to create ‘simulated stereo’. It’s not quite the real thing, but you don’t feel you have to go back to the shop to get a stereo pair, either. 

Like the superb Sonos One, it’s a wi-fi speaker built for hi-fi sound (and it outperforms Google and Alexa’s speakers effortlessly). Unlike the Sonos, it also offers Bluetooth for simplicity (which means guests can play their music without you having to hand out your precious wi-fi password). 

Riva has a long track record making sound systems for live music, so it’s no surprise that the Concert can really raise the rafters, with proper, thundering bass that almost makes up for the fact that the guitar solo no longer floats around the room on angel’s wings. 

Riva has a long track record making sound systems for live music, so it’s no surprise that the Concert can really raise the rafters, with proper, thundering bass

As well as Alexa voice control, it also offers just about every other imaginable way to get music into the device, including Spotify Connect, Apple Airplay and Google Cast. 

The app’s a little rough round the edges, but Bluetooth is definitely a reason to consider this over the Sonos One – as is the fact you can buy an £89 battery pack for the Riva to take it outdoors.