Formation is a family of wireless products that can be used separately or together as a modern, multi-room listening experience. At launch, you can get a sleek soundbar, barrel-shaped subwoofer, bookshelf-style speakers, an eye-catching 'Wedge' speaker, and a tapered box that brings older hardware into the new streaming age. It's like Sonos, but with an even steeper price-tag and, in theory, better audio quality.

Bowers & Wilkins has dabbled with wireless gear before. The company already sells a couple of speakers, such as the bombastic Zeppelin, and wireless headphones, like the much-loved PX cans, which you can trigger and control wire-free. But the heritage brand is best known for its wired speakers, including the decadent Nautilus and 800 Series Diamond line.

The team, based primarily in the south of England, has been dreaming about Formation for years. "I've gotta be honest with you," Kerr said, "I wrote down the original brief for these products a long time ago."

Nothing materialized, though, because the company wasn't happy with the standards and wireless-streaming technologies that were available. "We've had wireless products, but we've never attempted to use those technologies to deliver a premium performance loudspeaker in stereo space," Kerr said. "Because they're not appropriate, they're not commensurate with what we want to achieve. So we're definitely about doing it right and not necessarily doing it first. It's much more important from our perspective to be best in market when we do actually arrive."

Everything changed when the executive team met EVA Automation, a little-known company founded by Gideon Yu, a former Facebook CFO and, currently, co-owner of the San Francisco 49ers football team. By happenstance, the Silicon Valley startup was working on a wireless platform that, according to its mission statement, could "change how people interact and think about the home." Bowers & Wilkins was naturally intrigued. "We kind of went 'well, actually, that seems extraordinarily in line with our own thought processes and what we wanna do,'" Kerr recalled.

"We're definitely about doing it right and not necessarily doing it first."

EVA Automation bought Bowers & Wilkins for an undisclosed fee in May 2016. The new owner shed its brand and effectively merged with Bowers & Wilkins, pooling their hardware and software talents. "I don't think we see ourselves in any way, shape or form as two organizations," Kerr said. "We absolutely think of ourselves as one. And almost the minute the ink dried on that deal back in May 2016, that's how we consider ourselves now. We're Bowers & Wilkins, not EVA [Automation] and Bowers & Wilkins."

Few will dispute Bowers & Wilkins' history, and experience, in building high-end speakers. The company still has a factory in Worthing, a quiet town on the south coast of England, where it slowly assembles the Nautilus and 800 series speakers. Everything else, including the bulk of the Formation line, is built in China.