Reviews for 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)

I also have the A5 and I rated it 5 stars. If I could rate the A7 higher I would. I also have a Zeppelin and I feel the A7 is a step above the Zeppelin in sound quality. B & W have discovered a niche and nobody else has elevated their product to this level. The A7 is a quality product evident by its materials, look, sound and ease of use. While I am not an audiophile, I do appreciate music that's feels like your in the middle of the real production and the A7 sounds like this especially in the high-end. If you like your music loud, you can crank it full open with no distortion. The setup is very easy and in a couple of minutes it was working. I have the A5, A7 and a Zeppillin playing on multi-speaker mode in different rooms in my house and they all work great together or individually. The average music listener will not hear much difference between the A5 and A7 but it delivers the best sound you can buy in an airplay speaker. I recommend it highly.

I just got this system about two weeks ago from my girlfriend. I own a small 500sft flat in HK, so I need to optimize every inch. Most of the premium hi-fi solutions out there require at least two tower speakers which eat up at least 2 ft x 5 ft floor space. A7 takes up 1.18 x 0.52 ft, a fraction and many cables replaced by the power & optical audio from TV. Simple and sexy. Sound is PHENOMENALLY BETTER than 99% of tower speaker systems out there. Avoiding audiophile lingo here, but key points:

• Vocals: crystal clear.
• Bass: deep, resilient without muffle. No drowning.
• Mids: rich and bountiful, timber heaven. (ex. Michael Buble)
• Trebles sparkle,never wince (ex Sarah McLachlan’s live version of “good enough” or “Fear”) .
• All true at EVERY volume level.
• All are NOT mutually exclusive – T,M,B evenly balanced at every level.
• You will WANT to pick up a new hobby in Jazz music.
• Modern music and vocals sound better than classical music, because of narrow sound stage. Still sounds brilliant, but not as impressive as modern music. Not a deficiency, a plus for modern and a neutral for classical.
• You will NEVER listen to these speakers past the 60% volume level, because they are just THAT powerful.
• No dock (like the zeppelin) is NOT a deficiency, because docks are obsolete with Airplay. OBSOLETE! This is completely wireless.
• Better than Bluetooth, because: 1) no signal degradation. 2) confusion about the different BT standards. Period.
• Airplay does NOT require turning on Bluetooth on your iphone. This is huge. It’s not just one step you’re saving. Airplay is always on. Period.
• Airplay can control multiple speakers from your computer; BOTH the A7 and on my computer speakers. Flexibility is a simple and powerful solution.
• The 3.5 headphone jack = optical toslink receptor. Huge. Can connect it to the TV and use it for big movies in a small space.
• A7 are expensive but worth every penny, and considering the quality of sound they represent comparatively to a larger system plus the smaller foot print, they are actually very good value for money.

I've tried the A5 and the A7 at a store and the A7 is way warmer and more powerfull (got a sub and more speakers), of course exactly as stated by the compagny. So if you want the total experience, skip the A5 and go with the A7.

The construction is impeccable and its sound really great, simply a beautiful mix of form and fonction, I love it! A bit expensive but you get what you pay for.

Its lost one-star simply because its was, in apparence, hard to setup. I tried to follow the simple step provided to make it join my WIFI network but its alway fail to connect and the A7 was getting stuck with a blinking purple light (NO WIFI connection in the manuel)

I tried with the iphone app procedure and the mac app, no success. I didnt understand why my iphone, macbook air, apple tv, friends computer connected to my router but the A7 didnt want... I must say have general knowledge with WIFI and computer. I did remember that I had my router for quite a long time and after inquiring about it I found that I had a 802.11g/2.4 router (di-524) that was 10 years old and the A7 (A5 also) only work with a 802.11n router.

It written on the web site and in the manuel but I'm not somebody who's changing is router because its not the latest gizmo so I didnt think about it at first.

I did buy a 802.11n router and the A7 was joining my new network in 30 secondes...
I just wish the WIFI requirement was stated more explicitly, I guess some people will miss this beautiful product and think it dont work because B&W dont front the WIFI instruction more clearly and not everybody is computer savant.

Recap:

- Need a 802.11n router
- No ¨#$%#¨ only number and letter in the WIFI password

If there is audio drop out, its because your WIFI router signal is not perfect to the location of your speaker, more your router or speaker or change for a more powerfull router and its will work, i guess ;)

I hope it will help some people, this is an amazing product :)

Cheers

This is an excellent speaker, probably the best in this class of speaker. The sound is rich and simply wonderful. I have B&W floor standing speakers, and these things come pretty close.

That said, I'm sorely disappointed that B&W does NOT presently support the Wi-Fi Wireless N standard. So for those of you who play uncompressed audio because you want hi-fidelity, or those with big homes where the router is far from the speaker, you will see intermittent drops in audio.

This actually applies to all their Wireless speaker systems (as of December 2012) – including the Zepplin, A7 and A5.

I took the speaker back with a lot of sadness.

it's a nice speaker if you have a limited space. the sound is very good (mine sounded so so at first, but did get much better after a few days of breaking in). the base is good for a small speaker, but it does not sound like a big system like bose sounddock 10 does when you turn the volumn up. it's fuller sound than bose at low to mid volume. the airplay sometimes drops if there is any interference such as when my microwave is on.
it's a great speaker, but for the price i expected better.

I had to modify my Wifi Password to get the A7 to connect. I am using Airport Extreme with all of the default settings, my problem was that I had special characters in the WPA2 password and initially had my SSID hidden. The resolution was to remove special characters (like # or !) and use letters (caps or not) and numbers and I made my SSID visible. Once I did these 2 steps, the A7 connected easily.

If you want great quality sound, this is the unit to purchase. Setting it up is not as easy as a bluetooth system would, but it was still fairly easy. For those people that have/had problems with skipping, look into your network/router settings or the strength of your wi-fi range.

Download the B&W Control app first and the whole set up should be done within 10 minutes or less. Updating the firmware is very easy as well. Download the update from B&W website and access device properties by right-clicking on it's icon in the network folder. This is obviously done using your PC/MAC.

One more thing, I do own other B&W speakers and they require their speakers to be broken in. I found this to be the same with my A7. Sound is flawless!!! Never once had a skipping problem.

Network: Verizon FIOS
Rouer: Actiotec

Obviously when choosing this unit, price wasn't an issue. I wanted the best wireless sound dock I could find. I intended on using the unit outside on our patio. I typically get good wirless signal out there with my Iphone. After several failed attenpts at connecting while outside, I decided to bring the unit inside and give it a try. After resetting it 5 seperate times and going through all the steps again, I finially was able to play music through the A7! Sounded great. Unplugged it and took it outside...This is when I learned that anytime i move the unit I would have to go through the long hassle of trying to get it to connect to my wireless network. Not worth the trouble! I boxed it up and exchanged for a Bose Sound Dock 10. Easy to sety-up and great sound quality.

I love this speaker. Clear sound and no distortions when played loudly. Additionally, perfect for my small apartment - warm sound, typical of B&W offerings.

Easy to set up.

Highly Recommended!