Bowers & Wilkins Unveils New 'Formation' Series of High-End Home Audio Products With AirPlay 2 Support

Monday April 22, 2019 5:56 AM PDT by Joe Rossignol
Bowers & Wilkins today unveiled a new Formation Suite of high-end home audio products with support for Apple's wireless streaming protocol AirPlay 2.


The new line includes five wireless products at launch, including the three-channel Formation Bar, carbon-domed Formation Duo speakers, elliptical-shaped Formation Wedge speaker, Formation Bass subwoofer with a Class D amplifier, and the Formation Audio that brings wireless audio streaming to any passive audio system.

AirPlay 2 enables multi-room audio playback between the Formation products and other AirPlay 2 devices, such as the HomePod, Apple TV, and Sonos speakers. AirPlay 2 speakers also appear in the Home app across the iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch and work with Siri for controlling music playback.

The high-fidelity, high-resolution Formation Series products are also high-priced, of course, with prices ranging between $699 and $3,999.

Tags: AirPlay 2, Bowers & Wilkins
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69Mustang
4 weeks ago
B&W... those components look awesome. Damn.
Rating: 3 Votes
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unibility
4 weeks ago
Kind of fugly to me.
Rating: 1 Votes
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sunapple
4 weeks ago

Interesting. And good news in a way, in that I feared they'd ditched the computer accessories market when they were taken over. There's currently no mention of the MM-1s (I've got two sets, they're that good), and the Zeppelin (once their wow-factor product for the computer market) is only there in recertified form.

The T7 is there, but the only change the seem to have made to it since I got one several years ago, is to produce one in gold!

Hopefully this is a sign they will soon be addressing the lower end of the computer audio market, as if these are meant as replacements for the MM-1s, T7, Zeppelins, they are on average over twice the price.


Is wireless multi room considered to be a computer accessory? I think this is a different category from T7 or MM-1. Multi room is the future, I could see them ditching the older speakers you mentioned. The Wedge is the new Zeppelin, MM-1s don’t fit the strategy I think.
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Apple doing what they should have done in the first place; getting companies on board with AirPlay before trying to release a not-so-smart speaker...


You’re saying there were no AirPlay speakers before HomePod? They have been available for many years!
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