Bowers & Wilkins A7 AirPlay Wireless Music System

1. Unboxing
Apple-like experience.
2. Appearance/Form factor
Extremely good build quality. Love the minimalistic finish. Fits perfectly in the bookshelf.
2. Setup
Connected to the power cord. Set it up with the App from iPhone. Just had to follow through the user-friendly wizard. It was up and running!
3. Sound quality
Simply magnificent, near sublime sound quality! Response to wide range of frequencies, from bass to tweet is well balanced. No distortions observed even at the maximum volume. (Disclaimer: I am not an audiophile)
4. Extras
B&W gives three months of gift subscription for the Society of Sound where you could obtain high-fidelity FLAC 24-bit albums, with which, the true potential of this system could be unleashed.

Room for improvement:
Although A7 DAC is capable of processing 96kHz 24 bits, currently Airplay (although I am not sure whether is it Apple of B&W to blame) supports only up to 44.1kHz 16 bits.

Obscurity in tech specs:
It is not clearly stated whether A7 supports Wireless N? (since I have a wireless router with a/b/g/n support, I have no way to verify) …More

73 of 77 people found this useful

My first generation Zeppelin died a loud and unpleasant death. Having been on for several days and getting a lot of play, I heard - grrrrrr, BANG! My Zeppelin self destructed. For a moment I thought it just didn't want to play any more Bob Dylan - that can't be true. It was five years old and had provided many hours of enjoyment. I loved it's deep, rich, full sound.

Now it came time to select a replacement. Having had a previous occurrence with my Zeppelin of a bad power supply requiring me to send it to the service depot for repair, I was reluctant to buy another B&W product. I had a Sonos Connect allowing the Zeppelin to be part of my home listening system. So, I was looking for powered desktop/book shelf speakers to connect to the Sonos. I also have several Sonos powered speakers scattered around in various rooms, but I never thought the sound was any better than passable. I listened to several other offerings. None of them had the richness of my Zeppelin. I did not need a iPhone/iPod/iPad dock. I just needed a good powered speaker for my office. I had no way to listen to the A7 prior to purchase, but I was taken by B&W's claim that the A7 had their highest quality amps for best playback on their renowned speakers. Digital optical input to the amps should be ideal. So, I bought it.

I thought that my Zeppelin was the hottest thing on the market for my purposes. I was very pleasantly surprised to find that the A7 out performed the Zeppelin - to my ears. The sound is rich and dynamic. I generally don't like heavily accented bass. But the A7 has very clearly distinguished bass while not being overdone. The channel separation is as good as one can expect from a single desktop speaker. I like to use Bob Dylan's "Man in the long black coat" as a measure of my sound systems. The opening provides very clear channel separation and instrument isolation. The A7 is not my Mark Levinson/Thiel CS2.7 combination, but it's pretty darn good.

Several reviewers have been disappointed with the WiFi, and I am too. It's the only reason I rated the A7 as four stars rather than a perfect five. Luckily, my Sonos Connect has an ethernet output that connects directly to the A7. This way when I want to use the A7 independently from the Sonos music system, the A7 can access the internet via the B&W app. WiFi problem solved. …More

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