- HOW TO CONNECT IPOD TO AUDIOENGINE D1 DAC PORTABLE
- HOW TO CONNECT IPOD TO AUDIOENGINE D1 DAC BLUETOOTH
The converters feed 15 WRMS (AES) class AB monolithic amplifiers, with a ganged volume control, easily reached on the back of the cabinet.
HOW TO CONNECT IPOD TO AUDIOENGINE D1 DAC BLUETOOTH
The B2 combines a Bluetooth receiver with TI’s PCM5102A 24-bit DACs. The rear is uncluttered for easy setup, and the antenna can be oriented as desired Actually, in my case it’s the kitchen, the bedroom and the bath all the places the “big” system I use for reviews can’t adequately reach. The result? The new B2, a mains-powered, self-enclosed stereo speaker system that looks great while rocking the house. For a Bluetooth link, it sounded great, and when mated to their A5+ two way ($400), made for an awesome second system for office, kitchen or boudoir.” Now, imagine that B1 built into a cabinet containing two of their powered A2+ two-ways, oriented slot-to-slot in a landscape configuration. As reported in my last HifiZine installment, I was quite impressed with the “…new B1 wireless Bluetooth receiver ($190) from Audioengine. They excel at creating high excitement in a small form factor. While I was attending recent audio shows, including the 2014 CAS and this year’s RMAF (audioXpress, January 2015), I dropped by the folks at Audioengine. This is the modern equivalent of a hi-fi clock radio, without the clock… What they often lack is a compact, mains-powered stereo speaker that serves multiple masters. But most folks who care about sound quality already have a pair of headphones or earphones to use with their smart phone or file-playing iPod equivalent. Soundmatters have recently upped the ante with a palm-sized, battery-powered subwoofer, the foxLO, designed to connect to a foxL or any small speaker that needs some low-frequency help.
HOW TO CONNECT IPOD TO AUDIOENGINE D1 DAC PORTABLE
I already own what I think is the best portable speaker system, the pocketable foxL from Soundmatters, a tiny but mighty example of what happens when innovative thinking meets careful engineering, and which I still consider a reference design for a portable speaker. I reviewed the foxL for back in 2011. There are exceptions… Bowers & Wilkins’ Zeppelin Air is an outstanding stay-at-home docking solution, and Definitive Technology’s Cube captures enough volume to perform well at low frequencies. Without exceptional engineering, they can’t produce any satisfying low end. Almost all of these offerings, despite their designer’s usually disappointing best efforts, lack one key aspect: real bass. From those design-crazy Danes, the BeoPlay A2 bucks the trend, doing a great job of rockin’ the mids and highs.
There is also a plethora of iPod docks, portable or otherwise, most of which share an embarrassing kinship with their portable brethren: an utter lack of fidelity. From Sony, you have the dark and midrangey SRS-X3, or, for over twice the price, there’s the Bose Soundlink Mobile II with its lackluster presentation and sucked out upper mids. That product category is largely gone now, replaced by small boxes that receive their signals in other ways, but still serve that purpose of casual music at hand.īattery-powered portables abound, from the more esoteric Grain Audio’s portable PWS to mass market models with their crispy, overcooked mids and no real high end or bottom to speak of. For that, I need a different sort of creature…Ī long time ago, there were “radios.” Not console models, but simple radios small appliances that received music, news and drama from the ether. Sometimes though, I simply want to make a pizza or read a book unencumbered by headphones yet still have the comfort and joy of beautiful sounds around me.
I carry a little yellow triangle, filled with magic and many songs, that makes beautiful music for me wherever I go. My world is filled with stuff that makes music, from real humans playing real wooden instruments, to various boxes of base metal, wood and more exotic materials, like silicon and niobium. It’s an affliction I enjoy at both work and play.