General Forum

Re: Ipod/Iphone dock

TWG — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 03:38:23 GMT

For traveling the iPod is ok, if you want to have very good sound quality you do NOT buy an iPod! Then you buy a Sony MP3 Walkman or a Cowon compared with favourite headphones (in my case a Sony X1060 Walkman with B&O A8 headphones).

But at home it is another situation:

Why should I listen to lousy MP3-files on a xxxxx thousand Dollar sound system? Then I can just buy a 50,- Dollar iPod dock which fits the sound quality of MP3 perfectly! :)

So, a B&O iPod Dock would just be an addition or an entry for younger customers. But does the actual generation even know the word "quality"? Everything has to be cheap and made in china crap... so it could be a difficult task for B&O.

In my personal opinion the best solution to combine your computer music with your B&O audio system is the SONOS solution with their own touchscreen-controller and NOT the iPhone app. On the iPod/iPhone you have to start the app to control the system, change volume etc. On the sonos conroller you have physical buttons, too, like on the B&O remote and it reacts instantly.

But as always: Everybody should buy the things that makes him personaly happy and don't care what the others say :)

Re: Ipod/Iphone dock

Steve at Sounds Heavenly — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 03:06:25 GMT

To quote the advert of a certain UK high street bank: "There is another way"....

You can add an extra circuit board into the base of your Beo4 remote to allow it to control in iPod or iPhone (when used with the standard Apple Universal Dock). The dock costs £40 in Argos (for UK buyers) and when used with the Beo4 upgrade, this gives you direct control of the iPod via any spare source on the Beo4.

These kits are built for me by a Danish electronics company and they can be supplied by any UK and ROI B&O dealers. I know that Belfast, Dublin and Cork keep them in stock, as well as many of the UK dealers, plus all of the major resellers including MoreThanAV, LifeStyle-AV, Iconic-AV and Timeless-AV.

I use mine with a 3rd gen iPod Nano into a Beosystem 6500.

Steve.

Re: Ipod/Iphone dock

Tod Daniel — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 18:01:37 GMT

For me the iPod rules. it doesn't jump and stick like the Cd does on my Bang and Olufsen Century whenever you try to play it at a decent volume. It takes seconds to update my playlist from my MacBook, i can take my favourite music of my life in decent quality on the train to work, then to the Maldives for a holiday, then plug it in my Mini Cooper when im on the road and listen to it at home. Sorry guys, the iPod has changed the way I listen to music and i would NOT in a million years go back to distorted vinyl or sticking jumping CDs. I love being able to take this anywhere in the World. Bang and Olufsen are pure fools for not addressing the dock market - it's a huge huge market and believe me it'll be even bigger next year.

Re: Ipod/Iphone dock

mbee — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 17:08:10 GMT

I'm not only saying that iPod dock is of inferior quality than network shared music (avoid beolink for that as it's outdated), I'm also saying that it's less ergonomic to use that : in order to use a dock, you have to :

-synchronize the iThing with your computer (to get music inside. Not All your music, a part of your library).
-connect your iThing to the dock
-Navigate your music by using the iThing on the dock (I mean you have to stand up and WALK to the actual device![:'(] ) OR navigate your music by using a stupid screenless remote, trying to see the album covers on the tiny screen of the iThing which is some meters away

And then, you have stuff like this (soon to be released, but you can have almost the same result with standard DLNA media renderers and PlugPlayer for iPad):
(Please visit the site to view this media)
(sorry, I already posted that video, but I find that so "today" compared to "yesterday" dock solutions...)

Re: Ipod/Iphone dock

Chris — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 15:49:16 GMT

About 25 years ago CD's came along. And people wrote them off as an inferior media too Vinyl. Then those people went out and bought CD's and players(inferior remember) in vast quantities. B&O produced a beautiful range of players for this inferior media and it was a huge success.

Now MP3 is the dominant media, those same people who trumpeted Vinyl against it's inferior CD cousin dispel MP3 as a poor quality less able music source to the the slightly less inferior CD, but have forgot the much better Vinyl!

Now i don't want "multi room" with Beolink. All i want to do is enjoy some music, of a more inferior quality to CD which is turn inferior to Vinyl but not bought by the CD loving people anymore! I just want to go into my small study and plonk my phone which contains alot of my music on it, on a decent quality 1 box solution. Thats where the young and current media generation are right now. And if B&O doesn't respond with a tantalising glimpse of what it is to come when the young become more affluent then a whole generation could be missed.

Who made the portable Beolit media "player" all those years ago? They should have stayed at home and sung it themselves..it would have been less inferior!!

Re: Ipod/Iphone dock

vikinger — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 15:42:50 GMT

mbee:

I think the success of iPod docks is just based on the common ignorance that there are really better solutions... I'll writing a summer "saga" on that on my website in order to educate people (with test of Apple Airport/Sonos, and maybe Squeezebox), but as this is a summer issue, no one will read it

Read it! (But to speed things up I cheated and used Google Translate.)

Graham

Re: Ipod/Iphone dock

mbee — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 14:55:51 GMT

I think the success of iPod docks is just based on the common ignorance that there are really better solutions... I'll writing a summer "saga" on that on my website in order to educate people (with test of Apple Airport/Sonos, and maybe Squeezebox), but as this is a summer issue, no one will read it

Re: Ipod/Iphone dock

stefan — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 10:14:59 GMT

mbee:

I just can't understand why people still want docks. I see the usefulness in a second house, where you come with just your iPhone and have your source of music, but for a main house/flat, I just don't understand... It's like recording tapes of your prefered CDs to listen to them in your bedroom chen you can have beolink.

....

Completely agree! BTW, I have the ridax ipod dock station, that I can use in a beolinksystem all over the house, and I don`t use it anymore....

Stefan

Re: Ipod/Iphone dock

mbee — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 09:59:24 GMT

I just can't understand why people still want docks. I see the usefulness in a second house, where you come with just your iPhone and have your source of music, but for a main house/flat, I just don't understand... It's like recording tapes of your prefered CDs to listen to them in your bedroom chen you can have beolink.

Just connect a Squeezebox/Sonos/Airport Express/... system to your system, and you've got ALL your music, not just a selection, and can have the FULL audio quality, not a reduced quality sound (coming out of the line out of the iPhone at best, headphone out at worst)

Re: Ipod/Iphone dock

stefan — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 09:14:18 GMT

Yes, I think it is a product from lfd, called "ibundo", prized at 189.- Euros (375 GBP...?!)

Bosscom is the dealer for Scandinavia.

And it is definitely NO Beo product....

Stefan

Re: Ipod/Iphone dock

f5434964 — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 07:17:06 GMT

Seen on http://www.lfd.de/ - much cheaper

greetings elmar

Re: Ipod/Iphone dock

vikinger — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 14:27:13 GMT

burantek:

TripEnglish:
the day after Christmas.

...to wait in a closet 363 days for depositing under the XMAS '11 tree?

What happens if I am naughty during the wait?

Apple do this kind of thing year after year for some reason. Doesn't seem to affect their sales though! Maybe B&O are trying to follow their example.

Graham

Re: Ipod/Iphone dock

burantek — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 14:09:27 GMT

TripEnglish:
the day after Christmas.

...to wait in a closet 363 days for depositing under the XMAS '11 tree?

What happens if I am naughty during the wait?

Re: Ipod/Iphone dock

TripEnglish — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 13:23:02 GMT

I believe that's the Bosscom dock. The real deal won't be out until the day after Christmas.

Ipod/Iphone dock

Chris — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 10:38:17 GMT

Found this as i'm getting bored waiting for a decent Iphone dock(apart from the B&W Zeppelin).

http://www.eleganttechnology.co.uk/2009/07/06/new-ipod-dock-from-bang-and-olufsen/