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Pioneer Drops AirPlay Speaker Prices, Now Competitive with Bluetooth Models
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I absolutely dislike the sound quality of the Pioneer XW-SMA1-K. we bought it because our wireless speakers that we bought at The Source (Centrios-something, $99 per pair) were unreliable with the connection and we wanted a speaker in the other living room without having to hardwire stuff.
The speaker holds up the wifi connection relatively ok but has it's cutouts once a while - and worse, it sounds extremely thin and tinny. no bass at all, I've hooked up the cheap wireless speakers again and they show far more clarity than Pioneers speaker does. It's too bad. The sound "quality" makes it a total no go for me, even now at the reduced price.
The speaker holds up the wifi connection relatively ok but has it's cutouts once a while - and worse, it sounds extremely thin and tinny. no bass at all, I've hooked up the cheap wireless speakers again and they show far more clarity than Pioneers speaker does. It's too bad. The sound "quality" makes it a total no go for me, even now at the reduced price.
There is not enough bandwidth for everything in the house to run over wifi.
Time Capsule wireless backups
Wife watching a film from a shared iTunes library
Daughter streaming Netflix in the other room
Airplay in the rest of the house
Dropbox is syncing
iOS apps struggling to run over wifi cause iPads USB bus is stupidly off limits
And then a Skype call comes in.
And there's an OS X update.
Great.
Time Capsule wireless backups
Wife watching a film from a shared iTunes library
Daughter streaming Netflix in the other room
Airplay in the rest of the house
Dropbox is syncing
iOS apps struggling to run over wifi cause iPads USB bus is stupidly off limits
And then a Skype call comes in.
And there's an OS X update.
Great.
Airplay is great! I use it to stream music throughout my entire house. Although I would suggest using multiple airport expresses instead or specific speakers with built in airplay. Then you can connect any speaker with an aux input. I'm glad to see prices dropping though.
I love airplay, but as long as speakers sound as ****** as the pioneer device that I own, I rather go the way with using airport express etc., hooked up to better sounding stereo systems. the standalone speakers don't deliver at the price that they are being sold at - and obviously Pioneer agrees.
For people who play video games on their TV, LCD / LED displays are the only option. Or have plasma screens gotten better recently?Oh .. the good ol' Pioneer. How about go back and make a 70" Kuro plasma with AirDisplay?
I really hate saw the old Kuro went off the grid, and now Panasonic is raising the white flag too. I wish all HDTV is plasma
I've had a Sonos setup in my house for a few years now. It's nice, truly plug-and-play, and virtually never glitches. Expensive though. Sonos is the Apple of audio -- "it just works" devices that are easy to use.
Why don't you use one of the software available for free to convert your FLAC to ALAC (zero quality degradation - lossless to lossless). Then you can airplay them.
I'm sorry, but streaming lossless FLAC files over lossy bluetooth is the definition of fail.
I've got a whole set up at home with 4 separate devices around my flat. Only I use the Raspberry Pi on 3 of them and Windows 8 for the Media Centre (and a 50" TV driven off that). 2 of the RPis are running Linux with Shairport installed, the 3rd is set up with XBMC (in the bedroom). The Win8 Box also has Shairport running. This is the Open Source version of Airport and is, of course, quite free of any licensing costs Apple might impose. With this set up I can stream to all devices simultaneously from my MBPro, or individually from my iPad/iPhone. Of course I can also control the MBPro from my iPhone using the Remote app, and naturally can stream video to both TVs.
The cost of this set up? £125 (about $150) and about 30 minutes to get shaiport installed and running on the RPi Linux distro.
The cost of this set up? £125 (about $150) and about 30 minutes to get shaiport installed and running on the RPi Linux distro.
Yes it definitely gets better nowadays. No more worries about image retention, lower power consumption and it's getting thinner too. Definitely competitive with LCD until Pioneer, and recently Panasonic decided otherwise
You don't need sophisticated IPS, smooth motion (read: soap opera effect), or local dimming backlit array to get a pefect color, viewing angle, black level, contrast and uniformity on a plasma screen. Even the cheapest lowest end plasma can do those just fine.
In the end, LCD might have to be over-complicated to closely match with all the things a bare simple Plasma could do out of the box.
Simply said it's a great technology got wasted .. Too bad really.
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I'd say it depends on your setup. Bluetooth sound quality is really good on my premium Sony headphones paired with iPhone and there is no problem streaming 320 kbps mp3s at full quality. Same goes for Mac, although I had to change some settings.
The article was about PIONEER, and not APPLE. I would have said the same thing about APPLE, if they had cut their prices in half, but we both know, that's not going to happen. You are correct that people are willing to pay a premium for APPLE products.
The quality of Bluetooth audio depends on the equipment you have. Speedwise, Bluetooth 4.0 has a max speed of 25 Mbps, more than what is required for playing high quality mp3s (320 Kbps) or even lossless FLAC files (generally less than 1411 Kbps if ripped from a CD).
If you have quality Bluetooth headphones, you can stream extremely high quality music from your iPhone/Mac to your headphones with no degradation in quality. On a Mac, you may have to tweak your settings to ensure maximum audio quality.
See, for example, these headphones:
http://amzn.com/B009A6D034
As an Amazon Associate, MacRumors earns a commission from qualifying purchases made through links in this post.
Why does MacRumors bash Apple could it not be manufactures charge a premium for Airplay because they can and now they have found they were too greedy.
Why does MacRumors bash Apple could it not be manufactures charge a premium for Airplay because they can and now they have found they were too greedy.
Which is what it says in the article.
jbl soundfly
I have multiple JBL 'soundfly' speakers in my house (http://goo.gl/KQMpL), which use airplay. There are couple located in our hallways, kitchen, dinning room, bedrooms, etc. Using 'airplay' and the multi-speaker functionality, should we want to fill the entire house with music or even just a single room, this is the cheapest and easiest option than to wire the entire house. These speakers don't have a battery, so they plug directly into the outlet and sit in position with very little weight.
http://goo.gl/KQMpL
I have multiple JBL 'soundfly' speakers in my house (http://goo.gl/KQMpL), which use airplay. There are couple located in our hallways, kitchen, dinning room, bedrooms, etc. Using 'airplay' and the multi-speaker functionality, should we want to fill the entire house with music or even just a single room, this is the cheapest and easiest option than to wire the entire house. These speakers don't have a battery, so they plug directly into the outlet and sit in position with very little weight.
http://goo.gl/KQMpL
I have one of those, it is a very good speaker.
Love to be able to choose from my Mac, iPad and iPhone where to play music (AppleTV or Pioneer A1).
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i have one of these speakers, bass are even too much imho but the sound is great. Check settings, try to update firmware and in case go for a repair.
Love to be able to choose from my Mac, iPad and iPhone where to play music (AppleTV or Pioneer A1).
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i have one of these speakers, bass are even too much imho but the sound is great. Check settings, try to update firmware and in case go for a repair.
Oh .. the good ol' Pioneer. How about go back and make a 70" Kuro plasma with AirDisplay?
I really hate saw the old Kuro went off the grid, and now Panasonic is raising the white flag too. I wish all HDTV is plasma
Indeed. However Pioneer lost money on every Kuro it sold, even at the premium price point it deserved. That is why it stopped making TV's, the 'KURO' team was sold, or moved to Panansonic and the fruits of their work were seen in last years plasma's. I will keep my 60" KRP600A until it dies [or Apple hire / buy the KURO team and make a 70" Plasma.., which out performs it
].Plasma was always better for gamers. The early LCD's (and in some of the new ones I have seen) suffered from extremely poor motion blurring etc. I have had Panasonic Plasma in my Lounge since 2001 and a Pioneer in a dedicated room since 2009. Both were used with PS2 / PS3 respectively.
Blah. Only like .001% of the population can tell the difference between flac and a nice V0. Audiophiles are funny.
The advantage of Bluetooth is that the iOS device streams directly to the receiver without needing a good signal from a wireless network. I think Bluetooth also uses less power than streaming on WiFi which is what Airplay does.
It's good to have a high-fidelity option for wireless music but I suspect most people are not aware of the differences between the two streaming methods, or that streaming is an option at all.
It's good to have a high-fidelity option for wireless music but I suspect most people are not aware of the differences between the two streaming methods, or that streaming is an option at all.
I was looking at AirPlay speakers last week. Had a few models demo'd to me and it really is apparent how massively overpriced they are. At higher volumes, most distort or sound tinny. The only decent set were the Bowers & Wilkins A7, at £700 no less.
Yeah, no, I'm good thanks. My Logitech 5.1 Z5500s (plus a decent soundcard) I got 5 years ago sound better and they cost me not much more than £300.
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Buy a better, or another, router.
Yeah, no, I'm good thanks. My Logitech 5.1 Z5500s (plus a decent soundcard) I got 5 years ago sound better and they cost me not much more than £300.
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Buy a better, or another, router.
I've been told by a couple of AirPlay speaker owners (self-proclaimed audiophiles
Anyone with more technical knowledge care to elaborate?
Bluetooth A2DP uses lossy codecs (MPEG, AAC) so yes there will always be some degradation over the original source. But unless you have a high bitrate recording,
there should be no additional
loss because of the bluetooth transmission the loss comes when you encode into MP3.
It's possible to achieve bitrates of about 320kbps for MP3.
Probably not at that bitrate and with typical quality Airplay/bluetooth speakers.
I have a set of Philips bluetooth headphones and they're pretty good on the
headphone (not headset) bluetooth profile. Occasionally, they do drop audio
(probably interference) and the pairing process is a pain if you change the source.
They have a range of about 30'.
The main advantages of Airplay over bluetooth are that it will let you use higher bitrates
(including lossless ALAC) and longer distances, and that it's not prone to interference
from cordless phones etc. I think it's likely that the speaker quality will generally be better for
Airplay, though - bluetooth speakers are generally selling into the cheap convenience market.
I play my audio from an ATV1 through optical cable to a 120W per channel amp.
Most of my recordings are still MP3 VBR, but I'm using ALAC for any new ones.
Airplay wouldn't help me much for my main setup since I'd still need to power and amplify my speakers (150W).