Bowers & Wilkins brings iPod owners a unique iPod speaker system which promises to deliver a rich sound and looks to make it the envy of other iPod accessories.
What makes a great iPod speaker system? Crisp audio? Sharp looks? If you said both and you are truly looking for a unique statement among the world of iPod accessories British loudspeaker manufacturer Bowers & Wilkins has you pegged. Welcome the Zeppelin.
The Bowers & Wilkins Zeppelin looks like an amazingly well designed mini-blimp which happens to dock with your iPod. Its tapered shape is around two feet wide and finished in stainless steel. The Zeppelin serves as both an iPod docking station and one-piece amplified speaker system designed by an industrial designer in London.
Bowers & Wilkins seems to have a good reputation for putting out quality sounding gear and one has to imagine the Zeppelin is no exception to that rule. The company placed the midrange and tweeter drivers in the tapered ends of the iPod speaker system, spacing them in the curved areas so the sound is hopefully evenly distributed. You also get a five-inch subwoofer set in the Zeppelin’s center, supported by twin rear-firing ports.
Digital signal processing incorporated into three amplification channels helps to offer 50 watts of power for the woofer and 25 watts each for the two-way mid/high frequency section. Bowers & Wilkins incorporated design elements it feels will bolster the overall audio experience: aluminum-dome tweeters and tapered-tube tweeter loading technologies for better sound clarity, passive crossover circuits which use quality components for low sound reproduction and glass fiber midrange cones with resonance absorbing materials in positioned slots.
Bowers & Wilkins created for its Zeppelin iPod speaker system a small remote control with lets one manipulate volume as well as iPod features like play and track selection. A five-position bass equalizer is also part of the Zeppelin, along with S-video and composite-video outputs so one can view iPod video on a larger screen. This is in addition to an analog/digital mini-jack input to let one use another device besides the iPod with the Zeppelin.
Other well thought out touches on the Zeppelin include a dedicated tilt-base so the speaker system can be placed at the right angle for listening, flexible AC power standards ranging from 100-240V and a 30-pin docking station with spring-loaded design to cradle an iPod. This last feature is supplemented by a “floating arm” to let one put their hand around a docked iPod so it can be operated as if being held.
http://ipod.suite101.com/article.cfm/flying_the_zepplin_ipod_speakers
