Holiday Shopping Guide: B&W Zeppelin Review

I’m a bit of a speaker nerd, I believe in big speakers, powered by big woofers.  These big speakers need to be fed by amplifiers that run on grain alcohol instead of mere plebeian electricity.  The cables that connect the speakers should be thicker than my thigh and should look like pythons laid across a rain forest floor.  When a speaker system is turned on I think it should greet you with a hum and crackle like a city’s power substation.  I should want to rock out just by looking at a speaker system.  I’ve long believed that in order to accurately reproduce sound you need to move air the same way that the instruments or loudspeakers that made the original sound did.  That’s why I’m a bit frustrated with the B&W Zeppelin.  It’s too cool and too accurate to be real.  I feel like it’s a well crafted separates based stereo setup with 3 way speakers and a beefy amplifier hidden by some sort of holographic projection of a sleek lozenge shaped thing. 

I knew of B&W when I first ordered it.  B&W are famous for making some of the world’s finest loudspeakers.  Their 800 series speakers run close up to $20,000 for a pair and their signature diamonds and Nautilus series well exceed that.  I never thought they’d be the kind of company to join the ranks of Bose or Sony in providing cute little speaker systems that provide weakling sound with dismal clarity, and that’s what I expected out of a small stylish little shelf system.

I’m happy to report that B&W haven’t sold out, instead they’ve accomplished something rather remarkable, they’ve made a shelf speaker system that not only has a cool ipod interface but sounds fantastic.

First off the Zeppelin is built more like a tank than anything else.  A heavy rubber foot provides support for the unit which is made out of metal and heavy composite materials and trimmed with chromed plastic.  There are flush mount power and volume buttons, and a very solid mount that holds the ipod of your choice.  I was pleased with how solid the arm holds the ipod and how natural the ipod feels in your hand when you’re controlling it while it’s docked with the speaker system.    The covers over the speaker are taut and smooth.  The whole presentation is boxed up like an apple product complete with very elaborate nested packaging and carefully laid out accessories.  It’s pretty big too, it’s wider than my 24″ monitor and weighs more than my chair.  When you power it up a single color changing LED shines through the stocking like speaker shroud.  Red means standby, blue is playing, and blinking blue means paused.  When you hit buttons on the remote the light blinks back at you in a friendly acknowledgement.  If you really crank it the blue LED will begin to fade to red the higher up in volume you go to let you know that you’re damaging your ears and any nearby crystal.

The small remote feels like a stone in my hands and throughout the day I find myself wanting to pick it up and just toss it around and play with it.  It would have been nice if one of the buttons had a little nub on it so I knew where the center or the power was without looking at it, but it may have spoiled the feel.

Second the Zeppelin is dead silent, it uses a very smart active power management so that when it’s not playing music it’s a silent as the grave regardless of what the volume level is, however once you hit play it shows off the speakers within it very well.  The speakers in the Zeppelin come from the M-1 one of B&W nicest compact speakers.  These speakers are powered by 3 amps, one for left, right and a dedicated one for bass.  The result is that at half volume I become a bit self-concious even when I’m the only person rocking out, at 3/4 volume I expect to receive a noise complaint.

Right out of the box the sound was a bit bassy which is to be expected from any sort of desktop setup, but using the ipod I was able to set a custom EQ for the speakers in less than a minute which I found to be more accurate.  Once this was setup it seemed that the Zeppelin could do no wrong.  I feed it Dragonforce, to see how well it handled a huge range of bass and rapid fire guitar, then some Yann Tiersen for some french cafe music, then some Massive Attack, followed by the Pogues, over and over I kept queuing up files expecting to find a weak point in the Zeppelin’s armor and it just moved right along providing me with quality accurate sound, all the while looking so smug and sleek.

I was more impressed when I began to pick up the manual and thumb through it.  The Zeppelin has AUX inputs so that it can play sound out of your computer or cd player.  If I had a small apartment without too many audio sources this could easily be my full stereo setup.

The price could be a little off putting if you’ve never heard one yourself.  For 600 bucks you could have an array of different 100 dollar ipod docks with speakers hot glued onto the side, but none of them would have the same sleek solid appeal of the Zeppelin and none of them would sound half as good.  I give it a full recommendation.  If you can see if you can find a B&W dealer and visit their retail location to get a chance to experience it yourself in a pleasant quiet environment.  A noisy apple store during holiday season is hardly the best listening environment.

If you’re looking to upgrade your personal sound system or know someone who needs the sleekest and most accurate desktop audio system you really need to give the Zeppelin a listen.