The all-new mesh wireless system streams audio with up to 24-bit resolution and at sampling rates as high as 96kHz, but it also supports AirPlay 2 and Bluetooth.
Bowers & Wilkins has been relatively quiet since its acquisition by EVA Automation in May 2016, bringing just a few new products to market since then. That changes in a very big way today with B&W’s announcement of the Formation Wireless Music System, a robust multi-room audio system that targets Sonos where that company is most vulnerable: High-resolution audio (but certainly not on price).
B&W invited us to the company’s UK facilities last week for Formation’s press unveiling, where we had the opportunity to hear the first five components in the Formation suite: the Formation Duo, a pair of self-powered bookshelf speakers; the Formation Wedge, a single powered speaker that replaces the 2015 Zeppelin Air; the Formation Bar and Formation Bass, a soundbar and subwoofer respectively; and the Formation Audio, a wireless hub that enables you to add legacy audio components to a Formation system. B&W CEO Greg Lee hinted that we’ll see more products in this line soon.
Each Formation product boasts a contemporary industrial design that B&W says it hopes will attract a younger audience. And while Formation products will be manufactured mostly in China, the company says some of the parts for the Formation Wedge will be fabricated at the same factory in Worthing, Sussex that assembles B&W’s top-shelf loudspeakers.
Bowers & Wilkins CEO Greg Lee introduced the Formation Suite at an April 2019 press event in London.
As Sonos did before it, B&W has developed a proprietary mesh networking technology dubbed, not surprisingly, Formation. And like Sonos, B&W is also embracing several other “lesser” wireless technologies (lesser in the sense that Formation supports higher digital audio resolutions and sampling rates: up to 24-bit resolution and sampling rates as high as 96kHz).
Formation components—with the exception of the Formation Bass subwoofer, which is designed to be paired with other Formation speakers—will also support Apple’s AirPlay 2 technology (16-bit/44.1kHz streams) and Bluetooth (including support for the aptX HD codec, which can handle up to 24-bit/48kHz streams). Sonos supports up to 16-bit/48kHz streams (stated here only for the sake of comparison—Formation won’t be compatible with Sonos). If you have the infrastructure to take advantage of it, each Foundation component also has an RJ45 port for hardwired ethernet.
The Formation Duo is a pair of high-end, self-powered, wireless bookshelf speakers that share components with B&W’s 700 Series and Series 800 Diamond loudspeakers.
The Formation suite is also compatible with Spotify Connect, and the components can operate as endpoints for a Roon server. You can control the system using B&W’s Android and iOS app, which the company says will make for an intuitive and friendly user experience, or with iTunes (for AirPlay 2) on a Mac or PC.
