Category Archives: iPad

Cambridge Audio Sonata NP30

Sonata NP30 Cambridge Audio have been lurking in the streamer business for years but have been hard pressed show any appearance on the shop shelves. Now it looks as if they are finally getting to a shop near me with their recently announced Sonata NP30 Network Music Player. The apparatus is neatly designed yet slightly on the conservative side of the front panel fence.

On the spec side the player offers 24-bit/96KHz playback of Flac and other formats through its Wolfson DAC, streaming from a variety of sources – wired and not.

As with everything else on this planet, the device can be remote controlled from the ever present iPad/iPod/iPhone.

a-JAYS Four


Swedish headphone company a-JAYS have long been the producer of some very nice earplugs. With the a-JAYS Four they ad a microphone and inline remote control for use with Apple iPod/iPhone. And now it comes in white.

Well, all is not iPods. The a-JAYS are formidable earplugs in their own right. They sound incredibly good and are very nicely built. With the Four model they add a microphone and a miniscule remote control with multi-click features placed inline on a no-twist ribbon cable. The mic/remote combo is built specifically for the Apple iPhone but also works with other telephones, such as my [company issued] Blackberry Curve.

There are no downside to speak of. The connector is a 90° mini jack which is not exactly a super intelligent solution. Accidentally pulling the cable will damage either the cable or plug, or worse, the connector on the phone.  The earphones come in a nice little box that doubles as storage for the assorted earpieces. The problem is, however, that if you switch for smaller plugs, the originals don’t fit in the box. It would have been nice to have room for the default plugs. These are very small issues, though. The plusses are a perfect fit [in my ears, anyway] and really, really good sound quality. Binaural recordings from B&W Society of Sound’s Accidental Power Cut Sessions sound like nothing you have ever heard before. Frequency response is relatively neutral, favouring acoustic music without sacrificing bottom.

Bang & Olufsen Beosound 8


bosound8Bang & Olufsen has joined the iPod dock wagon and done it in as much style as one has come to expect. Equally expectable is the lack of vision in as much as the Beosound 8 does not support wireless audio streaming. Instead Bang & Olufsen relies on external devices for streaming, such as the Apple Airport (which they explicitly mention) or presumably anything with a Toslink connector such as Logitech Squeezebox.

A bit more novel is that support for Apple’s iPad. Anything Apple will fit in the connector. Drop in an iPad and you have yourself a pretty nice transistor radio with room adapting sound processing. Nice. Less nice, of course, is the fact that anything not Apple, is pretty much left out to dry.

As iPod docks go, this one looks good. Incredibly good, in fact. But iPod docks are legion. Did someone say “been there – done that”?

Sonos releases controller for Apple iPad

sonosipadThe Sonos iPhone controller has received a bigger sibling for the Apple iPad. The iPhone / iPod Touch was a great remote control for the Sonos Multi-Room Music System in its own right but the bigger screen of the iPad is coolness apparent. Like its older, smaller brother the iPad controller is free to download from the Apple App Store.

Copyright © 2024. Powered by WordPress & Romangie Theme.