B&W Announces Zeppelin Air at CES
PrintBowers & Wilkins has redesigned our all-time-favorite iPod dock, the Zeppelin, adding support for Apple’s AirPlay wireless-streaming technology and tucking a powerful DAC and a stronger amplifier inside the cabinet.
The new Zeppelin Air is a 2.1-channel system with four active drivers powered by four discrete 25-watt Class D amplifiers, and a subwoofer driven by an independent 50-watt Class D amp. Unlike the original design, The Air takes the iPod’s digital audio output and performs the digital-to-analog conversion in the dock (the original Zeppelin taps the iPod’s analog output). What’s more, the Analog Devices AD1937 DAC supports digital audio files with up to 24-bit resolution and 96kHz sampling rates.
The show floor was too noisy for a demo, but you know we're going to be checking this baby out as soon as B&W can get one out to us.
The Zeppelin Air will sell for $600 when it ships in March.
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Baer
January 09, 2011 at 12:30pm
Big negative, it does not work with anything but Apple stuff. Thos of us that prefer high performance gear would love this speaker but many of us would not be interested us being tied to Apple just to use a good speaker.
MrMick
January 09, 2011 at 2:38pm
Perhaps I should have been more clear. The Zeppelin Air will work with PCs, too. While it will only dock with iPods and iPhones, it does have a USB port that you can connect to either a PC or a Mac if you want to take advantage of its onboard DAC. Alternatively, you can plug in any analog source.
AirPlay uses standard Wi-Fi technology, but it does tie you to iTunes (on either a Mac or a PC).
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