AirPlay and AirPlay 2

First Alert’s Onelink smart and carbon monoxide alarm (review) was the first to hit the market with support for Apple’s HomeKit, and now First Alert is out with an interesting new version.

Unveiled at CES 2018, Onelink Safe & Sound is a new version that includes a built-in music speaker. The current version includes voice feedback when alarms are triggered, but First Alert says Safe & Sound will actually support AirPlay 2 for real music playback when the feature launches this year.

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Pricey workarounds and complex utilities for making AirPlay work with Sonos have existed for a while, but neither solution has been as simple as just clicking a button. Now there’s a new Mac app that does exactly that and for less than $10.

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AirPlay 2 is coming soon to iOS after being previewed at WWDC earlier this summer. While we haven’t tested AirPlay 2 yet, the upcoming feature has a lot of promise. AirPlay 2 enables multi-room audio playback, works with Apple TV, and compatible speakers will work with HomeKit and Siri.

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AirBeamTV last year created a Mac app that let you use AirPlay mirroring to a Samsung Smart TV without an Apple TV, and it’s now done the same for the iPhone and iPad.

Mirror for Samsung TV app for iPhone and iPad is a unique application which mirrors the screen and audio of your iPhone or iPad to any Samsung Smart TV. No additional hardware needed and you can mirror any app on your iPhone or iPad to your Samsung TV …

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It’s been a busy 2017 for Anker thus far, as the brand has expanded in many ways to smart home technology and other categories. Today, it’s launching a new campaign on Indiegogo under its Nebula sub-brand for the upcoming Capsule handheld projector.

Called the “world’s most advanced pocket cinema”, this soda-can sized device offers a range of connectivity options including AirPlay, Chromecast, Bluetooth and HDMI. All of which are supported by an internal battery pack that supplies upwards of 2.5-hours of playtime on a single charge.

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Marshall is best known for its guitar amplifiers, seen at almost any gig you’ll ever visit, but has recently been making more inroads into the general consumer market. It launched a wireless version of its over-ear Monitor headphones back in March, and has today announced an updated range of wireless multi-room speakers with AirPlay support.

All three speakers have the classic Marshall look of black grille with logo running prominently across it …

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If you use Google Photos on your iPhone and iPad (and you should), you can now use AirPlay to view selected photos on your Apple TV. Google quietly added the feature in an update to the app yesterday…

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Apple’s recent tvOS 10.2 software update broke AirPlay streaming for third-party utilities like AirFoil and Doubletwist by requiring hardware verification. Now DoubleTwist is out with an update for its Android app that includes a workaround and restores audio streaming over AirPlay to Apple TV.

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AirPlay is one of my favorite Apple technologies. The feature allows you to wirelessly stream content over WiFi, whether it be via your Apple TV or streaming audio via a standalone speaker. Either way, AirPlay fixes some of the common flaws plaguing wirelessly streaming content with Bluetooth.

One of the common complaints with AirPlay, however, is that it’s somewhat expensive to get started. For that reason, I’ve rounded up some of the more affordable ways to enter the AirPlay ecosystem below…

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Bang & Olufsen has announced two new wireless speakers, featuring a conical design and 360-degree sound projection. Both speakers support Apple’s AirPlay – as well as Google Cast, DNLA and plain old Bluetooth – and are compatible with the company’s BeoLink system for multi-room setups.

B&O has a reputation for great aesthetics and hi-tech features as well as fantastic sound, and Engadget reports that you won’t be disappointed on this score …

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Pictured here with my iPhone SE for scale

When a well-respected audiophile brand known for an amplifier costing a cool $150k launches an AirPlay speaker system, you can be sure of two things. One, it’s going to be pretty special. Two, it’s not going to be cheap.

Sure enough, Naim’s first wireless offering – the Mu-so which I reviewed earlier this year – came in at $1500. I did, though, consider it worth every penny. It’s a true replacement for a hifi system, delivering room-filling sound that I couldn’t fault. The design is fantastic, build-quality first-rate and it offers every input source you could ever want: AirPlay, Bluetooth, UPnP, Spotify Connect, Tidal, wired Ethernet, USB, optical and 3.5mm analog.

If you liked the sound of it but thought that $1500 was pushing things a little, there’s good news and bad …

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Android has featured the ability to stream to AirPlay devices like the Apple TV by means of third-party utilities for some time now, but no Android device has ever shipped with native AirPlay support in tow. That’s all changed with the announcement of the HTC 10, the first device to ship with native AirPlay support.

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AirParrot 2, the popular Mac utility that lets you wirelessly broadcast content from your desktop, now has an iOS companion. The app, appropriately entitled AirParrot Remote, lets users control nearly every facet of AirParrot 2 from any iOS device sharing the same Wi-Fi network.

If you’re familiar with the look of AirParrot 2 on Mac, then you’ll feel right at home with AirParrot Remote, as they look strikingly similar. Watch our video demonstration for a look at some of the things that AirParrot Remote can do.

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Naim Audio isn’t a household name outside of audiophile circles, but this British company has for many years made some of the most respected amplifiers in the business. Naim long had an informal partnership with Linn, and if the standard audio system fitted to Bentley’s ultra-expensive cars isn’t good enough for you, the optional audio upgrade is to a Naim system. You’ll also find it available through the Apple Store.

The company is notoriously conservative when it comes to new technology, refusing to even consider making a CD player for most of the 1980s, relenting only in 1989, when it felt the technology had developed sufficiently to allow it to deliver the quality it sought. It’s therefore no surprise that Naim has waited so long to launch its first wireless speaker system, the mu-so – nor that it has done the job properly when it finally did so.

The price is also no great surprise …

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Portable Bluetooth speakers are a dime a dozen these days – Amazon lists more than 37,000 of them! Though our shootout should help narrow the choice if you’re in the market for one. But portable AirPlay speakers are rather rarer, pretty ones even rarer and the Sugr Cube goes one step further in its bid to stand out from the crowd: it offers gesture-based control.

You tap the top of the speaker to pause/play, tilt it 45 degrees left to return to the previous track or 45 degrees left to skip to the next.

When I saw this on our sister site 9to5Toys, I wondered whether this would be a gimmick that you use a few times, or a genuinely useful form of control. There was only one way to find out, so I took delivery of one earlier this month to put it to the test …

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I don’t envy any vendor of legitimately premium audio accessories made for Apple’s devices. After established audio companies including Bose, Klipsch, and Bowers & Wilkins demonstrated that Apple device owners were willing to pay $300, then $400, then $600 for all-in-one speaker systems with increasingly better sound quality, Beats by Dre materialized, hooking people on expensive, stylish, and sonically underwhelming alternatives. Between Beats and the Bluetooth revolution, it seems clear that the speaker market is all about flash and convenience rather than audio quality… right?

Of course not. There have always been low-end, mid-range, high-end, and ultra-premium audio options; Beats has succeeded at capturing (a lot of) low- to mid-priced customers. By comparison, the respected British speaker maker Bowers & Wilkins focuses on the upper end of the scale. It literally established the high-end Apple speaker category with its original Zeppelin back in 2007, then refreshed it with AirPlay support as Zeppelin Air in 2011.

Now that another four years have passed, B&W has returned with another “even better” sequel: Zeppelin Wireless ($700). Having spent years touting its atypically upscale design and components as alternatives to low-fidelity speakers, the company is offering a compromise to broaden the new Zeppelin’s appeal. Despite packing speaker and amplifier hardware that’s in the same league as B&W’s $800 A7, Zeppelin Wireless includes a key feature — Bluetooth — only found in its entry-level $350 model T7. But the new Zeppelin still has AirPlay, for those who care, as well as Spotify Connect. So while the price tag may limit the number of people who can afford this new all-in-one speaker, its feature set has broad appeal…

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Bowers & Wilkins, maker of the iconic Zeppelin speaker and its AirPlay sequel Zeppelin Air, today announced an upgraded model with even more horsepower and features: Zeppelin Wireless ($700). The original $600 Zeppelin redefined “high-end iPod speakers” at a time when Bose and Klipsch had established a $300 to $400 price ceiling, successfully upping the ante in both sound quality and industrial design.

Zeppelin Wireless retains B&W’s classic elongated football shape and five-speaker concept, but now relies entirely on wireless streaming for audio, boasting Bluetooth aptX, AirPlay, and Spotify Connect support. Backed by 150 Watts of amplifier power, a new twice-as-powerful digital signal processor upsamples all inputs to 24-bit/192kHz resolution, promising to deliver greater accuracy, lower noise, and enhanced dynamic range through an audiophile-quality DAC. The speakers and enclosure have been upgraded, as well…

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