Best AirPlay speakers to buy in 2014.

We round up the best wireless AirPlay speakers on the market, from $250 to $700, featuring wireless streaming, easy portability and great design.

As long as there are Apple products, there will be AirPlay speakers – but which are the best? Speakers with wireless AirPlay connectivity are aimed largely at iPhone and iPod users, but most units nowadays also come equipped with hardwiring options to connect up any device not blessed with the Apple logo.

But how to separate the best from the rest? Alongside stunning sound quality, manufacturers pay special attention to the build quality and design, while ease of use is also a must. AirPlay is slightly trickier to set up than Bluetooth but once connected, you can’t argue with the simplicity of the best wireless speakers.

We’ve rounded-up the best AirPlay speakers you can buy in 2014.

Best AirPlay speaker under $300

Denon Cocoon Stream DSD-501

Denon proves you don’t have to break the bank for a quality AirPlay speaker. The Denon Cocoon Stream DSD-501 delivers a refined and full-bodied sound from its elegant curved chassis – all for just $250.

AirPlay is the main streaming feature, but Android users can stream tunes over the network as long as they have a DLNA media player app and the free Denon Cocoon app (which is lovely to use). You can stream from a NAS box and play internet radio, too. There’s only one wired connection: a USB port that will charge and play Apple devices (but only charge Androids).

But its simplicity in design hides just how good the Cocoon Stream sounds. The rich, warm performance is peppered with sharp punches, solid weight and stunning precision. It sounds fantastic. High and low frequencies are handled with a sense of finesse and control that’s admirable – especially at this price. With such polished sound and a decent features set, we can’t think of a better AirPlay speaker bargain than this excellent Denon Cocoon Stream DSD-501.

Best AirPlay speaker under $400

Libratone Zipp

The Libratone Zipp stands apart from the sea of monochrome wireless AirPlay speakers with its brightly-coloured felt covers that you can swap and change – it’s a fun and playful feature that’s caught many an eye. But it’s no gimmick – the Zipp has a premium feel, and the upright design delivers 360-degree sound that’s immersive and enjoyable.

A particularly open and clear treble sits alongside bass notes that don’t go boomy or flat. This is a confident speaker that delivers enthusiasm in spades without ever letting go of its composure. It’s fast and punchy, with ample detail to keep you interested in the music.

Throw in the easily-connectable AirPlay, an elegant app, a 3.5mm input and its portable design, and the Libratone Zipp is one of the nicest experiences we’ve had when listening to wireless music.

Best AirPlay speaker under $450

Cambridge Audio Minx Air 200

This isn’t just an AirPlay speaker. It’s a Bluetooth-toting, internet radio-playing all-round wired and wireless wonder. Compatible with iOS, Android and Windows devices, as well as offering analogue inputs and an ethernet port, the Cambridge Minx Air 200 is still the most versatile wireless speaker we’ve come across.

It may not be much to look at it, but its incredible sense of scale and subtle detail far outweighs any superficial misgivings. With powerful dynamics and an open soundstage, the Minx Air 200 is a bold and enthusiastic player that holds its composure even at high volumes. We’d avoid placing the speaker too close to a wall or corner to avoid boomy bass, though.

Wireless speakers with such comprehensive connectivity are hard to come by, so if your household is a mish-mash of music sources and devices – and if you want your room filled to the brim with exciting music – this Minx Air 200 is the speaker for you.

Best AirPlay speaker under $800

Audio Pro Allroom Air One

From its sophisticated leather finish and equally elegant and entertaining sound, everything about the Audio Pro Allroom Air One screams quality. Refined detail and accurate timing go hand in hand with a balanced sound that’s utterfly captivating.

Even the ‘vocals ooze quality.’ The Allroon Air One can handle tricky bass notes and has ample weight, all the while retaining strict control and finesse.

Alongside the usual AirPlay connectivity, you can transfer your smart device’s wi-fi settings to the speaker via USB – a handy feature. An optical digital input means you can also use the speaker as a soundbar, although its height might obstruct a fraction of your TV screen.

A beautifully crafted speaker with stunning sound, this AirPlay speaker will charm you away from its $800 rivals.

Best AirPlay speaker under $900

B&W A7

$800 is quite a lot to pay for an AirPlay speaker, but the B&W A7 justifies the price with hi-fi sound quality and sheer simplicity of use. An app is all you need to set the speaker up, while 3.5mm, USB and ethernet inputs offer flexible connectivity.

A subtle but classy unit that’s designed to blend into any room, the range-topping A7 impresses with incredible vocal clarity and depth of detail – it gives space to individual instruments while maintaining cohesion across complicated musical arrangements. An ability to hit deep notes with punch and weight is present here, as is a forgiving nature for more heavily compressed tracks.

Add in a multiroom feature, and the B&W A7 is on its way into the hi-fi hall of fame. It’s not cheap, but the A7 is worth every penny for the exciting and involving sound quality it delivers.

AirPlay no longer requires a Wi-Fi network in iOS 8.

Apple has made yet more improvements to AirPlay in iOS 8 by enabling compatible devices to make direct connections with each other for content streaming. This eliminates AirPlay’s reliance on a Wi-Fi network and fixes one of its biggest limitations.

In previous versions of iOS — including the latest iOS 7.1.1 release — all of your devices must be connected to the same Wi-Fi network to partake in AirPlay streaming. You couldn’t stream music from your iPad to your iPhone while on the train, then, and you couldn’t stream video from an iPhone to an Apple TV in a hotel that doesn’t offer Wi-Fi (not that you’d ever think about staying in a hotel that doesn’t have Wi-Fi).

But in iOS 8, AirPlay catches up with rival streaming technologies like DLNA by allowing direct device connections. So your Mac, iPhone, Apple TV, and other AirPlay devices can talk to each other without a middleman. In turn, this should mean that AirPlay streaming is snappier and more reliable, which is great news for those who use it to play games on their TV.

Apple sees this as an important change for enterprise users. “With iOS 8, you can wirelessly connect iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch to Apple TV without first connecting to the organization’s network,” the Cupertino company says on its website. “Which means you can present or share your work even if you’re offline or the organization has a complex network.”

It’s a small improvement, but it’s one that will make Apple’s already excellent streaming service even better.

The Griffin Twenty: An AirPort Express Amp That Brings Your Wired Speakers Back To Life.

The Griffin Twenty is a system that takes your existing speakers and allows you to do something new with them. You don’t need an iPhone speaker dock, or Bluetooth speakers, or cables. Connect your favorite speakers to Twenty, and it acts as your stereo receiver for pure digital sound.

Twenty is a problem solver. It doesn’t let your nice, expensive speakers sit around gathering dust. It allows you to beam music wirelessly – through AirPlay – to speakers that have never before had that capability. In short, it’s a game-changer.

The top features of The Griffin Twenty include:

•    Play audio from your device wirelessly to your stereo system
•    Stream music from AirPlay-enabled apps, like Pandora, Rdio, Spotify, Last.fm and more
•    Works with any AirPlay device: iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, even your Mac laptop
•    2.1 channel sound system
•    Output: 20 watts per channel
•    Optical audio input with included optical cable
•    Supports powered subwoofer with automatic active crossover @ 80Hz
•    Digital audio output to the user’s existing loudspeakers

Connecting your AirPort Express to Twenty with the TOSLINK optical audio cable allows you to blast music from any Airplay compatible device, iTunes library or app like Pandora, Rdio, Spotify and more – all while using those sweet speaker towers you still have from your college days.

Cone Speaker Learns What You Like To Listen To.

Aether’s Cone speaker is simple, in both its physical design and its interface. Inside, though, it has a brain that learns what you like.

The Cone is a cone-shaped AirPlay-ready speaker which also streams music straight from the internet. It learns your tastes, and even lets you cue up tracks by asking for them, just like Siri.

 You control Cone either by voice (powered by Nuance voice recognition like Siri), by tapping or twisting the speaker grille, or by pushing the volume buttons. Twisting the grille skips forward or back, or – with a bigger counterclockwise twist – you tell it to play something else.

How does it know what you like? If you crank the volume on a track, it assumes you’re rocking out. The speaker will partner with the usual streaming services (although which ones is still a mystery), and you can also just hook it up to your iPhone via AirPlay. Which is exactly what I do with speakers at home, and they can use both Siri and – say – Rdio’s personalized radio features to do the same.

Still, it looks cool, although at $400 it’s also going to have to sound as good as it looks.

Source: Cult of Mac.

Reports say OS X 10.9.2 breaks AirPlay Mirroring, and other news for Feb. 28, 2014.

Are you noticing any AirPlay issues on your Mac after updating to OS X 10.9.2? You might not be alone. There’s a growing thread on Apple’s support communities saying the OS X 10.9.2 update breaks AirPlay on a number of older model Macs. As AppleInsider reports:

According to one of the larger forum threads, titled “Airplay mirroring broke in 10.9.2,” users are seeing a host of different failures. For example, one user found AirPlay Mirroring was no longer a selectable option in the AirPlay menu.

Others have been able to connect to their Apple TV, but only audio is passed through in these cases. In addition to the mirroring faults, users detail problems with AirPlay’s desktop extension function…

…AppleInsider was able to reproduce a few of the described issues with a mid-2011 MacBook Air and third-generation Apple TV, which are running OS X 10.9.2 and Apple TV Software Update 6.0.2, respectively. We experienced scaling issues on both the Mac and Apple TV, low frame rates, sporadic mouse freezing and video failures.

Are you having issues with AirPlay after updating to OS X 10.9.2? Let us know in the comments.

In other news:

• The Apple online store briefly went down in the wee hours of this morning. When it came back up there was a new “Shop Accessories” section.
• A California appeals court has ruled that though drivers can’t talk and text while driving, they can’t be convicted of distracted diving if they are using their smartphone for another use: looking at maps.
• The Google Hangouts app has received a significant update. Now it’s universal, so it’s also formatted for the iPad. It also allows users to record and send video messages up to 10 seconds long, among other new features.
• Apple has published a new design-specific page to help developers design for iOS and OS X.

Bang & Olufsen on expensive speakers and mobile.

It’s CES 2014, and that means every tech company under the sun has made their pilgrimage to Las Vegas. Audio company Bang & Olufsen is one of those companies, bringing their line-up of premium speakers to show off. Back in October they rolled out their Immaculate Wireless Sound line of speakers, utilizing the WiSA (Wireless Speaker and Audio Association) standard to communicate between TVs, receivers, and speakers.

WiSA allows B&O to do something similar to what Sonos does, allowing the user to control which speakers are used to broadcast audio. They can control individual speakers or create groups of speakers with assigned roles. B&O worked with other WiSA members (which include recognizable audio names like Onkyo, Pioneer, and Klipsh) to help build the standard.

CEO Tue Mantoni told us that B&O had for the past decade been exploring building their own proprietary wireless systems, but never had the expertise to make it happen. They are a small company, Mantoni said, serving a niche market. Their strengths are in sound quality and acoustic design, not wireless communications. By partnering with some of their competitors in developing WiSA, B&O got a high-bandwidth 24-bit wireless standard that will work with WiSA receivers, speakers, and televisions developed by any manufacturer. In theory, at least, as B&O is the first to release WiSA gear.

WiSA supports up to 8 wirelessly-connected speakers, and B&O offers a trio of compatible speakers to suit your various needs, in addition to those build into their BeoVision 11 television. If you’re feeling particularly crazy, you can wire in another 10 speakers. This is all managed through the BeoLab Transmitter, a fairly large box with an array of audio and network inputs. It feels more like a router, though in typical B&O fashion they even made that look halfway decent.

What B&O brought to CES that was new, however, was a new controller to go with the Transmitter. Instead of an installed and wired touch control panel in your wall, the new Beosound Essence is a circular dial control that you could mount to your wall it you wanted to, but also can be fixed to a special metal plate and be portable. Portable, you say? Yep, because it’s wireless.

Essence consists of a smooth-turning but not free-spinning metal volume dial about two inches across and surrounding a four-way control pad. Up is play and down is stop, right and left are next and previous. It’s a simple control, but its integration with the BeoLab Transmitter means that you can, as CEO Tue Mantoni told us he’s always wanted, get up out of bed and with one tap have music playing. “As easy as turning on the lights,” he said, though to be honest it might actually be easier. And your light switches don’t make music play. Nor do they likely look anywhere near as good.

But that the Essence doesn’t come cheap. Coupled with the Transmitter, Essence will run $995, plus additional Essence dials for $200.

That’s not cheap by any measure, and we had the chance to Mantoni about B&O’s business model. He readily admits that B&O’s products are more expensive than their consumer-grade competitors, though he wouldn’t say that they really are their competitors. B&O in his words is a premium audio company, and thus justifies the premium prices. There’s no denying that B&O’s sound systems sound incredible, with the eight-speaker system they demoed shaking the conference room to the point where I felt sorry for whoever was attempted to exhibit on the other side of folding divider wall.

Mantoni explained that B&O’s approach to balancing design and engineering is similar to that of Apple’s: the two happen concurrently, with the designer and engineer working together on a project from the start. There is tension in the process, as the designer understandably wants a speaker that’s slim and beautiful, while the engineer wants as much space as he can get for his components. The collaborative process takes longer, but in the end you get a better product. That also costs more.

B&O has consistently hewn close to their standards of high quality materials and design, and that means expensive products. When asked about lower-cost B&O products, Mantoni intoned that there’s only so low they can go in terms of materials, design, durability, and audio quality and still be making something they’d be proud to put the company name on. That said, products like their Form 2 headphones have been in production for 28 years, and the manufacturing efficiencies they’ve developed over the years have allowed them to bring the price down to $119. Though this year at CES they did introduce an update in the form of the Form 2i, which adds on a microphone and inline controls for a reasonable $129 (that’d be $10 more).

Two years ago the mobile Bluetooth speaker market was barely extant. Since then it has exploded, but mostly on the low end with speakers costing $200 or less. B&O doesn’t compete at the price point, but they knew better than to leave money on the table — there are customers who want a portable speaker with B&O quality and are willing to pay B&O prices. For them there’s the $800 B&O Play Beolit 12.

The BeoLit 12 doesn’t use Bluetooth, though, instead relying on AirPlay and DLNA over Wi-Fi to get its audio from mobile devices. AirPlay is, of course, exclusive to Apple devices, and while DLNA is a standard that’s been integrated into some Android devices, it’s not a widespread one. B&O chose Wi-Fi and Airplay for two reasons: the quality of the sound and the easy integration with iOS, which is extremely popular among their existing client base.

In the short time that the BeoLit has been on the market, it’s grown to comprise a quarter of B&O’s revenue, and while their mobile speakers don’t currently support Bluetooth, Mantoni said that we can expect Bluetooth-compatible (and thus fully Android, BlackBerry, and Windows Phone-compatible) mobile B&O speakers to come in the future. The delay comes back to B&O’s processes — they are slow and deliberative on purpose, and make products that sound amazing and look incredible.

Apple TV 6.0 update now available, adds iTunes Radio support, AirPlay From iCloud and more.

It’s been expected, but now anAppleTV update has arrived. The new 6.0 firmware adds support foriTunes Radio and purchases from the iTunes Music Store. In addition, updating adds podcast syncing, viewing of shared photo streams and AirPlay from iCloud. This update gets the AppleTV feature parity with iOS 7.

The new firmware also upgrades the AirPlay wireless streaming feature, so you can now play iTunes store purchased content on other AppleTVs.

The download and install was very slow for me today, likely because Apple servers are slammed with all the other updates people are doing with new iPhones and in upgrading devices to iOS 7.

Apple has been enhancing the AppleTV software recently, and has added new apps for Vevo, The Weather Channel, the Disney Channel and other content sources.

To get the update on your AppleTV, go to Settings > General and select ‘Update Software’. This update works on the second and third generation Apple TVs.

Vrooooom! Single Men Everywhere Will Love The “Ferrari” AirPlay Speaker.

Hey fellas. You know what the laydeez love more than anything? Ferrari-branded gear, that’s what. When they see a man in a Ferrari jacket, or toting a Ferrari laptop, or – best of all – topped with a Ferrari baseball cap, do you know what she thinks? She thinks that you must own a Ferrari! Or that you drive one for a living, probably in those macho Formula One races.

More than anything, she can’t stop thinking about your Grand Prix.

Now, you can even buy a Ferrari-branded speaker. Clearly, it will look great in your home next to the sheepskin rug and the collection of Barry White CDs. It’s by Logic 3 (not Ferrari? No need to mention that to your female visitors!), and it “provides a crisp and powerful audio experience.” It comes with Airplay, so you can stream the uncompressed sounds of the uncompressed Walrus of Love right from your iDevice, and it also has Bluetooth for those times when you can’t even wait for an extra two seconds for the music to start (you know what I mean).

Want one? Of course you do. What red-blooded male wouldn’t want the power of a suspiciously-unspecified number of watts pumping through their bachelor pad? What stallion of a man wouldn’t want the seductive power of the Italian Prancing Horse at their side?

Which desperate single male wouldn’t drop $650 on this awesome unit?

Source: Cult of Mac.

The Libratone Zipp Will Make You Enjoy Music Again.

It rolls down stairs, alone or in pairs.

Zipp by Libratone
Category: Airplay Speakers
Works With: iPhone, iPad, Mac
Price: $450 as tested

I thought I’d heard everything there was to hear from wireless speakers. I have tested everything from the smallest, crappiest pocket speaker to the big booming Big Jambox. Then I “hooked” the Libratone Zipp up to my iPhone, and I started to enjoy music again.

What It Is

The Zipp’s name comes from its zipper-fastened felt covers, available in several colors. These protect it and make it fit right into the modern, stylish home. Or the filthy hovel, I guess. It’s schtick is that it packs a Wi-Fi radio for Airplay rather than relying on Bluetooth, and this lets it use a lossless stream for wired-quality sound without the wires (you can use wires if you like – both USB and jack).

The other feature is the tunable audio. Using a companion app, you can tweak the “FullRoom Optimization” and “Voicing” settings. In English, these let you tune the sound depending on the speaker’s position, and the EQ, respectively.

The Zipp also comes with a battery inside, which lasts from four to eight hours depending on use (wired vs wireless, volume, the direction of the wind) and takes a couple of hours to charge. You can also used it powered, wherupon it also becomes a handy iPhone dock.

In Use

To use the Zipp for the first time, you switch on, plug it into your iPhone using a dock connector or Lightning cable, and let it share your Wi-Fi network settings. This is all but automatic, and needs to be done once. After that, you can just connect to the speaker using the standard AirPlay menu from any app, or from your iDevice’s app-switcher shortcut thing.

This little zipper gives the speaker its name.

Volume can be adjusted from the iPhone or from the button on the top of the speaker, and the same button will play/pause the sound. Unlike Bluetooth speakers, which have buttons to adjust their own volume independent of the source device’s volume setting, the volume adjustment is absolute i.e. if you crank it all the way up from your iPhone, it’s all the way up. From a cold start, the Wi-Fi takes a short while to boot, and the speaker will sleep after a while if not used.

There’s a leather handle, the unit I tested came with three covers which are easy to change (with patience, anyway – you could break something if you rush), and the speaker sits upright anywhere you like. It’s very portable, but certainly not lightweight (it’s 1.8 kilos, or four pounds).

You can pipe audio in via a jack if you like (useful for extending the battery life) or you can hook up an iDevice via USB. This lets you send audio via USB, and also charges the iPhone. If you wanted, you could hook a dock up to it for easy access, but that would kind of defeat the point of its portability.

The Sound

Despite being the size of a couple of stacked coffee cans, the Zipp puts out a massive 60 watts of sound — all of them useful

This speaker sounds amazing. I have gotten so used to Bluetooth speakers and 2.1 satellite-and-sub setups that I had forgotten how good music can actually sound. Obviously I can’t compare this speaker to my memory of my old amp, CD player and floor-standing speaker setup from my days as an audio nerd, but I can compare it to the memory of how much I used to enjoy music.

Despite being the size of a couple of stacked coffee cans, the Zipp puts out a massive 60 watts of sound, all of them useful – you can jack up the volume all the way and it’s just louder, not more distorted.

Bass is big. Plenty big enough for movies as well as music. But the big surprise is the clarity. Right now I’m listening to outtakes from Billie Holiday trying to record The End of a Love Affair, and you can hear every crack of her voice, the intakes of breath and the tongue-chewing between those breaths. It’s enough to make you actually stop and listen, instead of letting it slide into the background like we do so easily with music these days.

And that’s not even a lossless file.

In short, you can crank this thing or listen to it quietly and, while it might not beat out a dedicated audiophile setup with full-sized speakers and a $1,000 amp, it’s close enough. And you can pick it up and take it with you. Try that with a pair of wired speakers – even small ones.

(Now listening to The Prodigy’s Smack My Bitch Up. Sounds fantastic).

Processing

The free Libratone app is pretty basic in terms of design, but it does the job. Better still, you can connect to the speaker from your iPhone while it streams music from your iPad or Mac (or other iPhone, I guess).

Why connect at all? Because this is where you control the sound processing.

FullRoom Voicing

Ports — they’re all hidden under the leather strap.

This is the name Libratone gives to the fancy sound-shaping tech that lets you hear room-filling stereo sound from such a small box. Using the app, you tell the speaker where it is in the room and it will work out what sound to send in which direction, bouncing it off the walls to reach your ears at the right time.

You pick a place (floor, shelf, table, outdoor) and then tell the app how close the back wall, and the distance to the nearest side wall. The controls are somewhat desktopppy for a touchscreen app. You need to pick from a pop-up list instead of just dragging.

It works, though. I’m not sure how it sounds different, but picking the right setting certainly seems to give you better sound than the wrong one.

EQ

EQ, or what Libratone calls “Voicing” lets you tune the sound for various sources. You can pick from Neutral, Easy Listening and more, and the results are what you’d expect. I leave it in Neutral most of the time, as the setting can be a little heavy-handed. Except at movie time, that is…

Movies

The Zipp turns out to be an amazing iPad companion for movies. Stick it on a shelf, set the settings and you’re off. Airplay automatically syncs the sound

(Now listening to Talking Heads’ Psycho Killer, remastered from the version on the ‘77 album. Sweet. Tina’s bass is driving).

and pictures, just like with Bluetooth, and – unlike even the Big Jambox – the speaker has enough power to handle the annoyingly quiet soundtracks of today’s TV and movies. I have been bingeing on the original Danish The Killing over the last weeks and it sounds great. When the characters are in a car, it sounds enclosed, like they’re in a car. Dialog is clear and sound FX are punchy. Movies are the one case where I use the EQ settings, as it just seems to tighten everything up. Make sure to change it back afterwards though.

The Bad

There’s almost nothing not to like about the speaker. The app is the real problem. As well as its old-school interface, it has a comedy battery meter. This gives a percentage readout of the connected speaker, but is all over the place. Sometimes it shows 80-something percent and then the battery dies. Other times it does the opposite, or climbsup as the battery discharges. Even funnier is the little battery icon next to the percentage. Right now the meter shows 92%. The icon shows an almost empty battery, in red.

Like I said. Comedy gold.

There’s almost nothing not to like about the speaker. The app is the real problem

Other than that, the only barrier to buying this speaker is the price. At a minimum of $400 (the version I tested comes with three covers, and costs $450) it certainly isn’t cheap. You could probably get a decent set of speakers and an amp for that price. Then again, compared to the $300 Big Jambox, that $100 difference might seem like the best $100 you ever spent. The Big Jambox is fun and all, but the Zipp is in a different league.

Let me put it another way. If you have $300-$400 to spend on any speakers, then you should consider this, even if you weren’t planning on portable. And if you were thinking about a high-end wireless speaker, this should be on your shortlist.

Now, please excuse me. I have to see what this thing can do with some Portishead cranked up high.

Product Name: : Libratone Zipp  The Good: Sounds fantastic. The best sound from a small package I have heard. Also, the felt jackets are cute. The Bad: Not cheap. The Verdict Will make you remember what music used to sound like. Buy from: [Libratone](http://www.libratone.com/web-shop/ “Buy now”)

Source: Cult of Mac.

Your iPad or iPhone screen on your Mac or PC!

Gain the power to mirror a device to almost any computer and present on a larger screen to anyone. Reflector uses AirPlay mirroring that’s built in to newer Apple devices to eliminate wires and confusion. Watch movies, play games or train employees from the palm of your hand.  Recording is built in to allow for training, later review or multiple presentations. There’s no need for other recording software. Reflector allows multiple screens to compare data, games or other content—play side-by-side with friends or check work with others. Wireless viewing of an iOS screen has never been easier, and the uses are endless!

Reflector is available as a single license for $12.99 and as a five-license pack for $54.99. Bulk pricing is available for schools, businesses and organizations. Learn more at http://reflectorapp.com.

Source:iPad Insight.