As promised here are my thoughts on the Bowers & Wilkins a5 AirPlay speaker system, I thought the subject line seemed very appropriate.
I've not ever heard such sound out of a unit as compact as the A5 and its truly astounding as to where the bass, midrange and top come from, surely 2 4 inch drivers and 2 1 inch ttweeters can't deliver that? Well fact is they can with a bit of help from digital Amplifiers and DSP. The frequency response for the A5 is from 47HZ-22KHZ at plus or - 3DB and the unit gives us 2 40 watt RMS channels to take care of the speakers. The A5 has been specifically designed to use with AirPlay and its here the A5 sounds its very best, after all! you're taking a digital signal and feeding it directly from say your iPhone to the speakers, a direct digital path, an Aux-In socket is provided if you wish to use analogue sources but I wouldn't recommend that if you can avoid it given the Digital path does indeed sound quite a bit better, you'll notice the difference. You can control the A5 either with the supplied remote control that fis neatly in your hand or the hidden controls in the front metal strip which runs 3 quarters of the way round the unit, the remote is positively cute looking more like a white mouse rather than a remote. Controls are offered for manipulation of an AirPlay device which include the usual track forward and back, play/pause and volume. The A5 handled all material well and I was keen to throw as much variety of audio at the A5 as possible, that's what I've been doing over the past 26 hours and I've not been disappointed. Placement of the A5 is crucial to the way the A5 sounds, you may find that the A5 won't work as well sitting on a table on its own in the middle of a room as it might say if it were perched on top of a bookcase, on a kitchen counter etc, reenforcement for the bass and treble seems to be the rule here so don't be afraid to experiment with placement of the A5. Clarity and volume are strong points of this system, I first had the A5 placed in my lounge on the computer desk for quite some time and was very easily able to hear the A5 throughout my house without requiring any really loud volume setting. At the very least I encourage people to go and have a listen to the Bowers & Wilkins A5 along with some of the other excellent digital offerings the company has available. ********** Dane Trethowan Skype: grtdane12 Phone US (213) 438-9741 Phone U.K. 01245 79 0598 Phone Australia (03) 9005 8589 Mobile: +61400494862 faceTime +61400494862 Fax +61397437954 Twitter: @grtdane
