Looking for a good home wireless speaker system that is expandable and works with both windows 7, android, apple.
I have looked at Sonos and it looks good, but that is based off of my limited knowledge and insight.
Yo- as you are the new resident expert im looking for your 2cents. I don’t want to miss out on something that could be from DDI holdings, and support a fellow designer. (I get more pleasure out of the products i own where i actually know the designer…)
All I can say is all in due time. Until then we have this beauty. Airplay plus Bluetooth, USB in that supports device charging and optical in to connect to a TV if you like. I’ll have to post this one in projects. It also has a real mahogany top which took some serious work to get into production with a nice satin finish.
Knowing the audio quality of the competitors I wouldn’t get anything from them, but you could get one of their wireless amps and connect it to some of our (or other preferred brand if you must 
) traditional home audio speakers for great listening.
What do you want to do? Multi-room/multi-source (i.e. you want to have different audio coming from different speakers but all manages through one device) or more home theater with the ability to stream content from a mobile device, or something in between?
I’m looking for multiple room solutions, multi sources, thus if im in my office i can play my music, if my wife is somewhere else she can play hers.
I liked the sonos because i could install two speakers in one area and have the same content coming from both, but that is only needed in the living room and basement.
I am loving the woodbourne look, it will go nicely with my new office purchase that arrives in t-minus 4 days…
That is exactly what inspired the product. I actually was visiting Llisa Demetrios, Charles Eames’s grand daughter and she was taking me through an archive of molded plywood prototypes which included chairs and speakers and all kinds of stuff. The Woodbourne’s CMF palette came out of that visit. The real mahogany top took quite a bit of fine tuning.
I get multi room, I think most people think they want to do multi source, but what they really want is the ability to do individual sources, which is slightly different.
Multi source means from one device you can send one song to one speaker, and another song to another… sounds neat, but when would you do that? Perhaps your wife wants to listen to something upstairs and you want to listen to something else downstairs, but when the source is a phone, you both have phones and likely your wife wants to control her own music. The only viable use case I can think of is putting something on for your kids.
Airplay does support multi room, but currently only from a laptop. For example in my house I have a Woodbourne in the bedroom, a Definitive SoloCinema Studio hooked up to my TV with an Apple TV connected to it, and a pair of Definitive Inclines in my office connected to my computer. From my laptop I can stream to all three and adjust the volume on each, but currently only through iTunes on one of the laptops in my house.
That is what we have for you at the moment in our portfolio, I can’t comment on anything else.
I can say that a lot of networked audio solutions outside of Sonos are launching in the next 2-12 months. Samsung has announced theirs, Bose’s was accidentally leaked yesterday. Of course in my opinion none of them look, sound or feel as good as a Woodbourne I’m pretty biased on the looks, but this thing sounds phenomenal. Last year at CES we had rented a 1,4000 sq ft penthouse in the Palms and had a party with about 300 people and just had a Woodbourne and it as thumping.
Okay, you have me sold.
Gonna order one right now.
Special request, pull my order and sign the bottom before shipping plz
Will Polk have any wifi offerings soon?
I’m looking to purchase after Jan. 1.
By wireless so you mean networked audio (not airplay or bluetooth)? If so, no comment at the moment. All I can say right now.
But clearly this is a very exciting category of products. In the past a passive speaker, whether from Polk, Definitive, or one of our competitors, was only as good as the system you hooked it up to. We engineer the heck out of our passive speakers, but if you hop them up wrong, or use, inferior cables, or have a low grade receiver/amp set up, it will only be so good. Not to mention that even if you have top shelf components, the system will not be optimized perfectly for the speakers. With products like the Wodbourne we have the opportunity to completely engineer the entire system to sound just the way we think is perfect. Pretty cool. With people swathing to higher bit rate streaming services, or connecting the product to BlueRay players via the optical cable, it really shows too.
I know Chevis ended up getting a Woodbourne, hope he is happy with it. I have one at home and in the office, love it.
I’m liking everything about SONOS lately.
I looked heavily at those and like lots of the the features and benefits although i did go with Polk for the first big room Its not to say sonos is out of the question in the future.
Currently, it is either Sonos or Bose, it looks like Sony dropped their current wifi offering. Sonos has it on price point but the Bose comes with a remote to easily skip songs instead of fumbling through an app. Next for me is to listen between the 2.
Although I have been told to wait and I am inclined to agree. I really don’t like an either or choice. And it seems to me that having music sent to speakers through my wlan is not an unreasonable request. I’m surprised there is so little to choose.
Not that suprising really, multi-room audio has always been an expensive niche, and however easy you make it how much market is is there really? I’m sure I’m the only person in my family excited for when my Sonos setup covers the whole house. And while Sonos was figuring out all the details of making this work easily(seriously think of how long they’ve been around, when it was new the level of wireless plug-and-play was like sci-fi) everyone else was trying to clone the iPod.
But times are a changing Jim.
And I would argue most of the market are not audiophiles. I know I am not and I am not tethered to the idea that a “stereo” needs to multiple black boxes stacked on themselves with a tangle of wires behind them anchored in my sound room.
I’d say most of the market wants small and invisible when it comes to their music delivery. We don’t need to see massively phallic speakers, we just want to hear music.
Now that my record player, reel to reel, 8-track, cassette deck, cd player and am/fm receiver all now fit into my phone, again, I don’t think it is too much to ask to integrate an amp and a wifi receiver into speakers that I only need to unplug from power to move to another room. We have been living in an untethered world for quite some time now.
The music industry is reluctantly embracing the 21st century, it is time the “stereo” industry do the same.
Especially with the advent of technologies like Airplay, Bluetooth, Chromecast, and the like, users expect to be able to share and stream both audio and video content seamlessly. Once my devices can handle point to point (like Bluetooth to my car or to a small speaker discreet speaker of the type iab described) the next ovbvious step is whole home audio distributed to multiple outputs in sync (multi room , multi source). It once was very niche due to he barriers of expense, set up (lots of wires), and difficulty of use (just look at a receiver, no thanks) but all three of those barriers are eroding quickly.
Lots of networked audio announcements already at CES.
Vizio, LG, and Samsung all announced.
We just made an announcement as well about our collaboration with DTS PlayFi.
Typical release, it took 3 paragraphs to get to the point. I think PR agencies get paid by the word.
Play-Fi is an advanced, whole-home wireless audio solution from DTS, designed to seamlessly transform mobile devices into handheld media hubs capable of playing stored music or music streaming from popular services on any Play-Fi connected speaker(s) in a home, wirelessly over Wi-Fi, with zero loss in sound quality.
Now that is exactly what I want. When will it be available at the Best Buy?
Is this Polk? It is on the Play-Fi website.
That’s a Wren product. Polk products have this on the front: 
We’re looking for something for Hurdler’s Christmas party, and for everyday studio use afterwards. There’ll be about 50-70 people at the party, and our space is about 1800 square feet. It also needs to work with both iOS and Android.
Any updated suggestions? (hopefully quickly, Woodbourne’s are on sale until tomorrow )
A woodbourne will fill that space no problem. I used it for a party in a penthouse in Vegas that was about that square footage… but I recommend something from our full playfi line so it can be more seamless across iOS and Android and will run off your WiFi. I’d get multiple S2 and put them all over the office. I sent you a little helper in your email.
Polk S2: http://www.polkaudio.com/omni-s2/d/1232C3519
If you have a TV or presentation area, get an SB1, it comes with a wireless sub as well. Designed by Jeremy Savage who sometimes posts here: http://www.polkaudio.com/omni-sb1-soundbar/d/1234C3525
Or if you really want to take it up a notch, get the A1 wireless amplifier designed by Cameron (from post above) and connect it to some bookshelves like the TSx:
http://www.polkaudio.com/omni-a1/d/1235C3528
http://www.polkaudio.com/tsx220b/d/1051
Good thing is you can wirelessly sync any combination of these so they all play in unison. Happy listening!
I got the Polk woodbourne and Camden square based on Yo’s recommendation and i have not been dissapointed - so much so that i bought a second woodbourne and will also be picking up the polk gaming sound bar shortly. Sound and looks are both met - wife also was not a believer untill she lived with it for a weekend and showed her how simple it was to play via bluetooth i was a little upset though the day i came home and she had it out laying in the lawn while she gardened… (i cant buy her nice things)
LOL, that is funny. The gaming bar is a nice unit. We also just released a bar called the MagniFi, it also has Bluetooth and is only 2" tall, includes a wireless sub, and has a new feature we designed called Voice Adjust. It does exactly that, it allows you to adjust dialog volume in movies, music, and games, separate from the master volume. This comes in handy with late night gaming or action movie watching as you can effectively lower the volume on the explosions and increase the volume on the dialog. Came out of a set of insights based on an ethno research burst.
http://www.polkaudio.com/magnifi/d/1237C3537
The N1 gaming bar is still awesome. It has a really cool feature called SDA (stereo demential array). Basically it cancels out left and right signals to push the sound stage wider and trick you your ears into thinking the speakers are to the left and right of you vs in front of you… That tech was in our patent library from the 80’s, originally meant to recreate a more concert like sound, but it is amazing with video games where there is a lot of dynamic sound action constantly moving from far left to far right… plus were were able to convince the company to make a white version. 
Sorry for all the detail. We’ve been having fun nerding out with our engineers for the past few years.
