After 15 years my trusty Zeppelin Air (30 Pin) has finally died.
I want to replace it and if the current Zeppelin was Roon Ready I would probably purchase one but I am torn between the Zeppelin and the Formation Wedge - which is Roon Ready.
Now I know that my original Zeppelin wasnāt Roon Ready but being a long time Roon user Iād prefer it if my next wireless speaker was Roon Ready.
Does anyone have both and have an opinion?
I havenāt seen a great many quality reviews online about the Wedge and they are not for sale at any dealers in Adelaide so I canāt demo one, Iāve actually been wondering if B&W are going to discontinue the Formation line.
Any opinions/advice is welcome in regard to these two wireless speakers.
Well Iāve successfully talked myself out of purchasing a Wedge, the Formation line looks dead to me Bowers & Wilkins havenāt pushed the line on their social media for a long time.
I have the Wedge. It sounds really good but it does not seem like a finished product. There is no physical input other than lan and I use it away from my local network and can only use it with Bluetooth. But it canāt do Bluetooth without a wifi connection. The controls on top are only volume and play/pause no skip. It still sounds great and better than anything else I tested in that price range but I woundnāt buy it again.
Iām now looking at KEF LSX IIās and debating having them wall mounted, the wall is 3.2m wide by 2.4 high and the kitchen is 5.2m long. If wall mounted they would be around 2.7m apart, which could be too much for these little speakers. Otherwise they would be place on a kitchen sideboard with about 1.4m between them.
My only issue is do I want to spend the extra on the KEF speakers (I am a KEF fan by the way and have used KEF speakers for over 30 years) but truth be told I am quite sick of spending money on electronic products that donāt last long or donāt work as they should.
Hey @moderators my thread might be better if it was moved from the Bowers & Wilkins section but Iām not sure where it should go. Thanks.
Having a speaker with rear-firing reflex vent mounted to a wall, is a very bad idea (Despite from personally having bad experience with LSX 2 in terms of sound quality and connection stability, I had to send them back).
In a kitchen, I would not overly worry about distance between the speakers, as you donĀ“t expect much of stereo imaging, do you?
If you want Roon-ready compact stereo speakers, it might be a good idea to wait for Cambridge LR M. HavenĀ“t heard them yet, but they are basically same size/price as LSX2, have no vent on the back, and their productsĀ“ wi-fi connectivity is usually rocksolid.
Iām liking the specs of the LR Mās but they might not get past my wifeās āspecific unobtrusive ratingā, she actually likes the LSX IIās!!
Is this the case even when they are mounted away from the wall on the B1 wall brackets?
The connection stability issues worry me though, the Zeppelin Air wireless never worked well with Roon and I had it connected via USB to a RPi4 which runs rooExtend, it never missed a beat and was connected wirelessly on a 2.4GHz band.
Funnily enough, if the speakers were wall mounted in the position Iām considering, then my work area in the kitchen is pretty much dead centre and would be much better than the position of the Zeppelin. Not that it will affect my decision too much.