Introduction
I have been trying to remember when I first got a bluetooth device. It must have been about five years ago. It was a bluetooth add-on dongle that came with a first tier MSI motherboard. I actually only just threw it out last week in a bit of a feng shui attack!
When bluetooth first came out, there were analyst opinions and conjectures (this was before blogs had really taken off) that this was finally the sign that the IT/tech world was finally moving towards wireless bliss. I imagined printers, speakers, cameras, microphones, even monitors, being connected without wires. The back of a PC desk is a tangle of black spaghetti that's more frustrating to deal with than a pile of coat hangers. I've actually often wondered why the industry doesn't come up with a standard for different colored power and connector cords for different types of devices. Would make life easier! But anyway, I digress. The fact is that even though wireless speakers have been available for a few years now, they are far from widespread and this is the first set I've ever had my hands on.
Back in January this year (2008), John went to the consumer electronics show (CES) in Las Vegas. He met up with Griffin who make a set of digital RF speakers that are completely wireless. They charge up on an iPod docking station but can then be placed anywhere within fifty meters of the docking station. The speakers in this review aren't that wireless - they still require a power cord to mains power. Where as the Griffin speakers use bluetooth technology as part of their functionality of being portable, the AV Labs AVL337s are actually quite heavy and bluetooth is a feature for connectivity and not mobility.
Bluetooth is is an unlicensed short range radio frequency technology that works by communication between transceiver microchips. It's an open standard with a governing body, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group, responsible for licensing standards concerning range, power and sensitivity. The AVL337 speakers offer bluetooth v1.2 class 2 which transmits at 1Mbit/s and has a range of 10 meters or less.
The AVL337 speakers
Each speaker in the set is 30W which is pretty decent for desktop speakers. But there's all sorts of funny tricks that manufacturers use when they list the wattage, signal to noise ratio and RMS for speakers - not that I'm suggesting AV Labs info on their box is untrustworthy, I'm just saying, I wouldn't pay too much attention to numbers, let's give them a whirl instead.
Before I do, a word on how they look. They are a classic sort of speaker look. "Black piano" finish. The front panel has a glossy look surrounding the tweater and main speaker which don't have a protective cover over them like many speakers. Because of this, I wouldn't recommend that they are placed on the floor. It's not so flimsy that a finger touching it would hurt them, but an accidental foot placement could easily destroy them.
The volume, bass and treble controls are on the back of one of the speakers, as well as the power switch and power cord plug.
At the bottom back of both speakers is the positive and negative thumbscrew connectors. These types of connectors use bare wires to connect the two speakers together. A two meter cord is provided.
If you don't want to use the bluetooth connection, you can use the standard channel analogue audio connections - a two meter cord is provided.
The s-output is to connect to a sub woofer.