As a guy who spends a lot of his life on biztrips and bike tours, I find Apple’s AirPlay wireless audio technology to be almost useless. Give me Bluetooth, baby! Bluetooth lets me haul my Soundmatters FoxLv2 to exotic locales (Houston, Indianapolis, etc.), zap it with music or Internet radio from my Motorola Droid Pro or my iPod touch, and enjoy the same listening options on the road that I have at home—minus my vinyl collection and turntable, of course.
But the new Libratone Zipp makes AirPlay almost as convenient as Bluetooth.
I just walked down my street carrying the Zipp along with my iPod touch, playing Shakti’s A Handful of Beauty hundreds of feet beyond the range of my home WiFi, and the music just kept on playing. That’s because of Libratone’s PlayDirect technology, which lets the Zipp work as its own WiFi router so it connects directly to your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch without requiring a WiFi network as AirPlay normally does.
Upside? PlayDirect is really just AirPlay, and AirPlay is lossless, so technically you get better fidelity than Bluetooth can offer. Downside? PlayDirect doesn’t work with Android or Windows phones.
All the wireless convenience in the world wouldn’t be worth squat if the Zipp lacked the guts to deliver decent sound. But the guts look good. Behind that zippered mohairesque cover, the top 4 inches or so of the Zipp is an open framework. Inside are two ribbon tweeters mounted at a 90-degree angle. Below them is an upward-firing 4-inch woofer. An internal rechargeable battery powers the unit for up to 8 hours wired/4 hours wireless, says Libratone.
Why the weird driver config? Because it makes the sound omnidirectional. Plop the Zipp in the middle of your beach blanket and everyone will get pretty much the same sound. The driver layout reminded me of the Libratone Live, although it lacks the Live’s midrange drivers.
The Zipp’s available from Apple Stores for $399, with your choice of red or gray cover. Curmudgeons who abhor the whitewashed, hipster-packed dystopia of Apple Stores can instead visit a traditional retailer and pick up the $449 Classic Color or Funky Color editions. The former comes with black, blue, and red covers; the latter with black, yellow, and pink. Purple and dark blue are also available. Extra covers are pricey, though: $49 each.
I was pretty darned delighted to find that I took only about 1 minute to get the Zipp playing tunes off my iPod touch. I just turned it on, hit the PlayDirect button, went into my iPod’s WiFi setup menu, chose the Zipp as my network, switched over to the iPod’s Music app and hit play.
When the Zipp had turned itself off after idling a while, or the iPod had gotten out of range (about 25 feet in my house), I sometimes had difficulty getting the iPod to reconnect. But restarting the WiFi on the iPod and turning the Zipp off and on again usually fixed the problem right away.
AirPlay setup requires connecting your iOS device through the Zipp’s USB jack and transferring the WiFi settings from the iOS device to the Zipp — a one-touch operation.
You may be thinking, “How can I stream Internet radio from my iOS device if it’s using the Zipp’s WiFi instead of my home WiFi?” Good question. Libratone’s PR rep gave me instructions on how to do this, by entering a static IP address for the Zipp on my iPod, but I wasn’t able to get it to work before I had to turn this review in.
Not much in the way of controls on the Zipp. Just a power button with Libratone’s bird logo, surrounded by plus/minus volume controls. A couple of little buttons on the back to select WiFi or PlayDirect. That’s it.
thanks brent for this great review again! i was already considering the zipp as a possible and probably better sounding alternative to my bose soundlink.
what i am missing though are precise statements about battery life. you said you were listening to it near full volume most of the time. how long would the battery last at such settings? 4 hours playing wirelessly is a bit weak IMO.
Hi, oluv. I had to kind of rush this review in because of some technical issues with the product I'd planned to review for last Wednesday, so I didn't have a chance to do any formal battery testing, but I got somewhere around 3.5 to 4 hours of use in wireless mode with the unit cranked pretty loud most of the time. I'd guess you might get another hour of it at moderate level. I didn't use it in wired mode except when I measured it.
ok thanks, but i have another question i forgot to ask, namely about the "directplay" mode.
what's that special about this mode, as all airplay-enabled speakers i have at home do allow direct streaming during their configuration mode, where they also build up an own ad-hoc network. i don't understand what's the deal with libratone's way?
i also read about your reconnection issues, where you had to turn off the speakers. did you forward these issues to libratone?
i also wanted to ask if during "directplay" mode several devices can connect simultanously or only one? of course only one can playback at once, but it would be cool, if let's say during some beach party three iphones could be connected at the same time, and when one stops playback, another one can stream to the speaker, withouth having to reconnect or setup etc.
meanwhile even the logitech UE boombox allows 3 bluetooth devices to stay connected simultanously. as soon as the playback stops from one, the other one can continue playing. there is only one issue with the boombox: after powering up it automatically only connects to one of the three known devices. you have to force the connection on the other two manually.
What I want to know is what effect does that heavy cloth, or whatever it is, cover have on the sound.
Hi Brent. thanks for your review on the zipp. I'd like to hear your comment on the stereo imaging of this speaker. How good is zipp's stereo imaging comparing with Big Jambox's LiveAudio? And comparing with two Nokia play 360 working in pairing mode(one for left channel, one for right channel)? .
Second question is regarding apple store sales. When can I find it on store.apple.com? It's not there now.
Thanks!
@oluv: I have tested only a couple of AirPlay products, and don't have any on hand to check that. I also don't have the Zipp - review sample has gone back - so I can't check the simultaneous connection. I didn't have any problem switching instantly between AirPlay from my computer and from my iPod touch.
@al: The cover was on when I took the measurements. I can't say what the acoustic effects are because I didn't measure it without the cover (no one would use it like that), but there's no treble roll-off, so it seems likely they figured in the acoustic effects when they voiced it.
@Iwyjames: There is no stereo imaging with the Zipp. Indoors, it delivers what some in audio circles refer to as "fat mono" - i.e., essentially monophonic sound that has some sense of spaciousness to it because of the dispersion and the room acoustics. Outdoors, it is essentially a mono product. More or less the same statement applies to the Big Jambox. Its speakers are so close together that you can't get a stereo image, but they're far enough apart to deliver a slight sense of spaciousness. The Big Jambox has the LiveAudio feature for more spaciousness, but it seems to sound good only with binaural recordings.
The Nokia Play 360 I haven't heard, but if you can send L and R separately to two of the speakers, the stereo imaging will be far, far better than the Zipp or the Big Jambox. However, I can't vouch for the sound quality. That would depend on whether the engineer who did the voicing knew what he/she was doing. We see some compact/BT products these days that had the potential to sound good but don't because they weren't voiced or whoever voiced them had the wrong priorities.
If I recall correctly, the Zipp hits Apple stores next month.
Just heard from the PR guy that the Zipp is now available at Apple stores:
http://store.apple.com/us/product/H9737VC/A/libratone-zipp-portable-airp...