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.  Read the story »