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A few months back B&W announced the Zeppelin - a rather cool looking iPod speaker system. We had a discussion in this thread back then.
Yesterday I actually tried it out at the store. The Zeppelin is better looking for real than in the pics. Not that it looks ugly in the pics; it just looks better in real life. It's a simple unit that has but one power cord in the rear and a Zeppelin-shaped remote. The rear of the unit sports aux inputs and a couple of holes for the bass drivers. Up front is a silver iPod dock. It's nicely designed and accents the unit when no iPod is present.
Sonically I have to say I was impressed. This is B&W sound. While it obviously doesn't compare with an 800 series setup, it holds its own remarkably well. In a rather cavernous showroom, the Zeppelin could clearly pound out the tunes with no distortion. At reasonable listening levels the sound was generally clean and tight as one would expect B&W sound to be. I have to say, the Zeppelin made my iPod sound pretty good. I generally use 256K or 320K AAC compression on mine, but even some of my older tracks which were compressed as mp3 sounded decent enough.
I would personally never use this as my main system (I use N802 now for that) but in a room like a kitchen or bedroom or as a starter system for someone, it would be really quite good.
The only complaint I had was that the bass was a touch boomy. There didn't seem to be any adjustment controls anywhere, but I didn't look too hard either. I would imagine the showroom I was in (concrete floor, hard walls, really high ceiling) contributed to the boomy bass.
The unit is priced around $650 (Canadian) so it's not cheap but sonically it beats the slightly cheaper Bose Sounddocks easily. If I had a need for it, I would not hesitate to buy a Zeppelin.
Related link - http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPL...?find=zeppelin
Yesterday I actually tried it out at the store. The Zeppelin is better looking for real than in the pics. Not that it looks ugly in the pics; it just looks better in real life. It's a simple unit that has but one power cord in the rear and a Zeppelin-shaped remote. The rear of the unit sports aux inputs and a couple of holes for the bass drivers. Up front is a silver iPod dock. It's nicely designed and accents the unit when no iPod is present.
Sonically I have to say I was impressed. This is B&W sound. While it obviously doesn't compare with an 800 series setup, it holds its own remarkably well. In a rather cavernous showroom, the Zeppelin could clearly pound out the tunes with no distortion. At reasonable listening levels the sound was generally clean and tight as one would expect B&W sound to be. I have to say, the Zeppelin made my iPod sound pretty good. I generally use 256K or 320K AAC compression on mine, but even some of my older tracks which were compressed as mp3 sounded decent enough.
I would personally never use this as my main system (I use N802 now for that) but in a room like a kitchen or bedroom or as a starter system for someone, it would be really quite good.
The only complaint I had was that the bass was a touch boomy. There didn't seem to be any adjustment controls anywhere, but I didn't look too hard either. I would imagine the showroom I was in (concrete floor, hard walls, really high ceiling) contributed to the boomy bass.
The unit is priced around $650 (Canadian) so it's not cheap but sonically it beats the slightly cheaper Bose Sounddocks easily. If I had a need for it, I would not hesitate to buy a Zeppelin.
Related link - http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPL...?find=zeppelin
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