It is my dream to one day have one of those truly awesome speaker systems that wirelessly plays music to any room in your house via the click of a button. I want it to not only be easy, but sound great, and be relatively unobtrusive (remember Joey's TV that appears as if from nowhere? Yeah, I want my music to play like that). I have days' worth of music on my computer (when I can get iTunes to work properly), and burning a bunch of mp3s to a disc and playing it in a single room just doesn't cut it anymore.
My dream is not unachievable, but it's one of those "down the line" things. It is a house project yet-to-come utilizing a technology that may not yet exist (there are certainly options, but who is to say if there won't be a better one later). I have however found that there are a whole bunch of really good interim choices… choices that let me put off my impossible dream for years (decades?) to come.
Stop me if you've heard this one before, but there's this thing out there called Bluetooth. Your phone has it; your computer has it; heck, your car and your refrigerator just might have it. What Bluetooth does (just in case you're unaware) is to connect electronic things to one another without wires.
It doesn't always work brilliantly though, now does it? Sometimes it's great, my Bluetooth mouse works like a dream and rarely needs new batteries. Other times it's horrible, my home phone has a Bluetooth thing that connects to my cell, but when I take a cell call on the home phone it sounds like the person at the other end is a million miles away and underwater.
You may have figured out where I am headed here, but those good interim choices for music dispersal I spoke of earlier work via Bluetooth. You see, you can connect your computer in one room in your home to a Bluetooth speaker in another (if that other room isn't too far away) and suddenly have a truly great method for hearing music… all your music, not just what will fit onto a single burned DVD (and for those of us who like Christmas music, that's huge).
Article comments
1 - oluv
to tell the truth i was not that impressed by the flip. regarding sound/size ratio the on tour micro wireless impressed me more.
the flip can play really loud but loudness is not everything, i prefer a lower but richer output. even my much smaller FoxL sounded better than the flip.
i tried playing with various EQ settings and tried some SRS WOW effects, and with boosted bass the flip indeed could impress a little bit, it is a pity that JBL didn't push this little speaker a bit more!
2 - Phil
Dear Oluv, your comment was much more helpful than the blablabla original review. thank you !
3 - Autumn
This product does not work....will not pair up to my laptop....
4 - LA Productions
We tested the Flip, and yes it did impress us. However a bit hard to pair up with a laptop using Bluetooth.
5 - Igor
Bluetooth seems to have problems staying paired up.
These remote speakers seem to share a problem of having poor or non-existent equalization. As I've aged my ear treble response is falling off and I find that the resulting bass boost makes many sounds unintelligible, especially speech and classical music. The bass simply obscures everything else (ironic since so many amp designers worked so hard at boosting bass). Many speaker systems are simply unlistenable.
I play many things from the iPod, which has an EQ, but it consumes much power and is inaccurate.
IMO the speaker bar should have a decent EQ, especially with regard to bass attenuation.