Smart Speaker Reviews

With the Zeppelin in place, I downloaded the Music App to my iPhone, created an account, plugged the speaker in and waited a few moments for it to be found. The app quickly connects up and lets you know when you can add your services. I linked my Tidal account—which I used for most of my auditions—and set up Tune-In as a guest. The app also offers curated Bowers & Wilkins playlists and recommendations based on your listening habits, and there's a cross-platform search function. I enabled Alexa from within the app, which I used to play Pandora stations via AirPlay. There are sliders for bass and treble, and you can deactivate or adjust brightness of the projected halo.

Performance
When S&V editor Al Griffin asked if I'd like to review the new Zeppelin, I instantly recalled sitting across from the Zeppelin Air in 2011 in my kitchen, whose island served as my work desk. The Air was on a counter about seven feet away, and from the first moment it grabbed me and wouldn't let go. Its image climbed so deeply and palpably into the room that any thought of using it for background music was abandoned. Fortunately, that still describes this latest iteration, and hearing it brought a huge smile back to my face.

Sonically, there are a number of things the Zeppelin gets right. Most impressive is its soundstage and imaging. The physical design puts the drivers so close to the edges of the baffle—tweeters at the outer points, mids inside, woofer at center—that you get uncanny separation that seems impossible for a speaker whose tweeters are less than two feet apart. The image goes somewhat beyond the edges of the speaker, and the further back you get the wider it gets—to a point. But it's the height, and especially the depth of the sound- stage that makes you shake your head in disbelief. Vocals are big and command a presence well out from the back of the stage, and the ease with which you can pull out instrumental lines and background vocals in space is staggering.

Next up is the Zeppelin's outstanding timbre. Instruments and vocals sound natural, open, and filled with inner detail, no doubt thanks to the work the company has done eliminating spurious distortions from its driver and cabinet designs and the speaker's unfettered dispersion. And then there's the final leg of the Zeppelin tripod, which is solid dynamics aided by effective DSP that lets you crank the system up with zero hint of distortion or strain. The Zepp topped out around 97dB on dynamic peaks in my room— plenty loud, though not the loudest I've heard from a powered speaker or soundbar. But what's there is oh, so clean, and even when maxed out the system does a great job tracking the build of a crescendo.

Eddie Holman's 1969 hit "Hey There Lonely Girl" is one of my fun go-to tracks for testing all-in-one speakers; it's a surprisingly good recording for its day and one that challenges a system's ability to image and hold together under the strain of Holman's soaring falsetto. Plus, it's just a well-produced 3 minutes and 33 seconds of music, with a great instrumental arrangement and vocal harmonies to complement Holman's delivery.

This song beautifully demonstrated all the Zeppelin's strengths. The intro features some long trumpet notes at dead center, rim and drumhead taps on a tight-miked snare left of center, and some lovely xylophone scales on the right. On the Zeppelin, this all floated slightly above the speaker, well-separated despite being a bit squeezed together, with nice sharp leading edges on the drum strikes and well-rounded xylophone notes that came up and out into the room with good decay. When Holman came in a moment later with his first lyric, the voice was huge, sitting well above the accompaniment and far forward into the room, and despite the slight touch of reverb that was regretfully added to his booth-isolated vocal (which the Zeppelin easily revealed), it was rendered with both cleanliness and dynamic power. When the backup singers came in for the chorus, positioned right of center, I could clearly make out the distinct male and female voices despite their obviously tight spacing. And Holman's delivery only got higher in pitch and louder as he raised the volume with each pass and held the notes longer. The Zeppelin revealed so much new detail in this recording I hadn't heard before that I had to play it again, and then again and again until my wife finally called down to ask for a break.

Jazz tracks were also impressive on the Zeppelin, which really delivered on tightly miked brass, piano, and bass, and it did a great job reproducing the ambience of natural spaces—including convincing audience applause that seemed to occupy a layer above the stage. Orchestras were compressed physically into a too-narrow stage but came across with good hall ambience and benefitted from the Zepp's natural timbre. And well-recorded rockers had good dynamics, pacing, and cleanliness despite being a little bass-shy.

Which brings me to my few complaints. First, though the Zeppelin gets loud for a small, self-contained speaker, it was so pristine that I sometimes wished for a little more room on the volume slider. Second, while you get well- defined bass lines and good snap on low-end impacts from drums, there's only so much that little 6-inch woofer can do. Test tones in my room showed that the speaker dropped off rapidly below 60Hz and was down 13dB at 40Hz, though still making some audible contribution. That's good for a speaker of this size, but a little more power and punch at the low end would have been sweet. And finally, as much as I rave about the Zepp's imaging, the price you pay for the close-positioned drivers is sweet-spot sensitivity. It fills a room well, though you need to be sitting dead center to hear its real magic.

Conclusion
The Bowers & Wilkins fourth-generation Zeppelin is an extraordinary system that's easy and fun to use and—most critically—brings music to life in an impactful and engaging way. No, the Zeppelin is not cheap, and never has been. But 15 years after the fact it has indeed proven itself to be another of those soul- satisfying, audiophile speakers that deserve a rightful place in the pantheon. I'll be sad to pack it up and send it back.