I arranged a demo of the new Zeppelin Air this afternoon with my local HiFi Dealer as I'm looking for a small system for my office.
So I turned up and the guy is still getting it out of the box...no space for it in the demo room, so he decided to sit it on top of a speaker.
Straight out of the box and with my iphone docked (Lossless Files), initial impressions were fairly good, nice sound but nothing groundbreaking in my mind...started out with a bit of Modest mouse which sounded average and a little bassy at higher listening volumes. Rumour's latest album sounded better and I was impressed with the detail that the dock produced, even at higher volume levels you could hear the layers of music and instruments (albeit I think the dock obviously needed playing time to loosen up a bit). Next I decided to play Robert Plant and Alison Krause's Raising sand.....OMG talk about unruly bass!!!!
Next I thought I would try the streaming capability from my laptop to the Air. Hmmmmm obviously this was straight out of the box and wasnt set up for streaming.....the guys had no idea what the problem was and I had to read the instruction manual to see how it worked. When I worked out the laptop needed connecting to the zeppelin via the supplied Ethernet cable to set it up...there was no offer for me to go ahead and do this...now bearing in mind this is why I was looking at the zeppelin because most listening would be via streaming...just seemed I had a wasted journey.
Would I part with £500 for it.....I really do not know at the moment. Would I get just as good sound with a pair of B&W MM1 speakers connected to my laptop for £100 less...probably!!
So I'm now back to square one with regards to my office system :-(
I'm back to the idea of active speakers, a dac and possibly an airport express to stream my music.
Or alternatively a pair of MM1's connected directly to the laptop.
So I turned up and the guy is still getting it out of the box...no space for it in the demo room, so he decided to sit it on top of a speaker.
Straight out of the box and with my iphone docked (Lossless Files), initial impressions were fairly good, nice sound but nothing groundbreaking in my mind...started out with a bit of Modest mouse which sounded average and a little bassy at higher listening volumes. Rumour's latest album sounded better and I was impressed with the detail that the dock produced, even at higher volume levels you could hear the layers of music and instruments (albeit I think the dock obviously needed playing time to loosen up a bit). Next I decided to play Robert Plant and Alison Krause's Raising sand.....OMG talk about unruly bass!!!!
Next I thought I would try the streaming capability from my laptop to the Air. Hmmmmm obviously this was straight out of the box and wasnt set up for streaming.....the guys had no idea what the problem was and I had to read the instruction manual to see how it worked. When I worked out the laptop needed connecting to the zeppelin via the supplied Ethernet cable to set it up...there was no offer for me to go ahead and do this...now bearing in mind this is why I was looking at the zeppelin because most listening would be via streaming...just seemed I had a wasted journey.
Would I part with £500 for it.....I really do not know at the moment. Would I get just as good sound with a pair of B&W MM1 speakers connected to my laptop for £100 less...probably!!
So I'm now back to square one with regards to my office system :-(
I'm back to the idea of active speakers, a dac and possibly an airport express to stream my music.
Or alternatively a pair of MM1's connected directly to the laptop.