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Cambridge Audio's Minx Air 200 Earns The Crown For Best Home AirPlay Speaker
If you’re a high-end audio fan, you’ve probably heard of Cambridge Audio, the London-based firm that makes some of the best equipment in the business. The brand is currently undergoing some changes that involve targeting the growing number of users who are looking for wireless in-home and portable speaker solutions. Hence the new Minx line of devices, which borrows its name from Cambridge’s affordable home-theater speaker range, but adds goodies like AirPlay and Bluetooth.
The Minx Air 200 is part of this new effort. It’s a large home speaker that packs in AirPlay, Bluetooth, two 2.25-inch drivers and one 6.5-inch subwoofer, as well as direct access to up to five preset Internet radio stations without requiring a connection to an iPhone, smartphone or computer. The Minx Air 200 is a beast of a networked speaker system, and at $599 it compares price-wise to other higher-end options like the Bowers & Wilkins Zeppelin Air or the Libratone Live Speaker.
- AirPlay
- Bluetooth
- 3.5mm and RCA wired input
- 802.11 b/g
- Ethernet
- 200W amplifier output
- MSRP: $599
- Product info page
The Minx Air 200 is somewhat sober in its design choices if I had to pick one word to describe it. It’s white plastic, with a light gray front grill and metallic rim bordering the front grill. Unlike some of the competition like the Zeppelin, the Minx isn’t trying to draw too much attention to itself. The arc of it adds a little bit of design flare, but mostly this is a speaker that strikes you as subdued, and that’s just fine. The Air 200 isn’t bad looking, it just is. Which sets the stage for it to live or die based on its performance.
You’ll be able to connect to the Minx Air no matter what type of device you’re trying to use as your music source, and the AirPlay connectivity is solid (the protocol seems to have come a long way in terms of stability, which is a bonus for Cambridge, who are relative latecomers to the market). And Ethernet support is a hugely welcome addition if you’re the type that can’t even fathom the idea of an occasional drop-out. It’s probably not going to be much use to most looking for a wireless speaker, but the fact that it’s there at all is excellent.
Preset Internet radio stations is another huge advantage for the Minx Air 200. With the Minx Air app, you can change settings on your device and cycle through 10 preset stations. Minx sets these up automatically, but you can change them within the app. Best of all, you can switch between five presets on the Air 200 itself with hardware buttons, giving you access to Internet radio without any kind of connected device required. That’s a huge advantage versus the competition when it comes to features.
True to its audiophile roots, Cambridge has also included advanced audio signal-boosting technologies, including built-in digital to analog converters (DACs) and AAC decoding, as well as tech designed to maximize the quality of Bluetooth stereo streaming to CD-quality standards.
All those claims of better sound bring us to the money question: Is the sound actually better? Yes, yes it is. Put simply, this is the best-sounding AirPlay speaker I’ve reviewed, and the best-sounding Bluetooth one, too. AT $599, it isn’t cheap, but in this case you definitely get what you pay for. Bass performance is impressive, as is max volume, though even Cambridge admits this won’t go as loud as some of the competitors in the interest of preventing any kind of distortion even at the top end, something competitors aren’t necessarily as concerned about.
Cambridge may be trying to move into more mass-market products, but the Minx Air 200 still demonstrates the company’s audiophile roots. Audio clarity is great, even from streamed online sources like Rdio being streamed once again over the local network. The connection doesn’t seem to suffer from excess network traffic, either, and Bluetooth connections are likewise solid (with the usual limits on proximity), and sound quality also shines there. If you’ve been making do with even something as good as an Audyssey Audio Dock Air, you’ve been missing out. And that’s what Cambridge wants to do with the Minx line: Show a generation that hasn’t been particularly focused on audio quality what a difference it can make when someone pays attention to that above all. Mission accomplished.
This is an excellent choice for an AirPlay/wireless home speaker. A battery would be nice, as there’s a handle for easy enough portability, but in its category, it’s still by far the best choice at the current price, and probably a better option than some of the more expensive ones out there. Cambridge Audio may have waited and let its competitors get a head start in this category, but the wait paid off: The Minx Air 200 is a polished, well-designed piece of audio hardware that confidently tops the competition.
Official Flipboard, Facebook And NFL Apps Are Coming To Windows 8/RT
At its Build developer conference in San Francisco today, Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer announced that Facebook, Flipboard and the NFL are about to launch their apps on Windows 8 and Windows RT. As Ballmer notes, Microsoft believes that developers are doing great work on Windows 8 and that the number of apps “that are coming into the store is phenomenal.” He did, however, single these three apps out, which makes sense, given that they are indeed marquee apps for Windows 8 that were, until now, sadly missing from the platform.
Now that Microsoft is putting a new emphasis on small Windows tablets with Windows 8.1, apps like Flipboard will make a lot more sense on the Windows 8 platform.
Flipboad CEO Mike McCue argues that he doesn’t just want to build “the best app possible for Windows 8,” but that Flipboard wants it to be “the best version of Flipboard possible.”
As for the Facebook apps, it’s not clear what Facebook exactly plans to launch (we asked and will update this post once we hear more). It’s a fair bet that a basic Facebook for Windows 8 app and Messenger for Windows 8 would be the first apps to make it to Microsoft’s platform.
Microsoft, Ballmer said, also “recently struck a deal with the NFL to bring its content and applications to a broad set of Microsoft devices, including all Windows tablets and PCs.” The first app to come to Windows 8, it seems, will be a fantasy football app.
Tickets Are Now Available For The 8th Annual August Capital Party In Silicon Valley
TechCrunch’s annual party at August Capital is almost here and we just released more tickets. The first batch went within 24 hours so jump on these quick. Space is limited.
We’ve hosted the TechCrunch summer party with VC firm August Capital since 2006. This year, as in years past, we’ll be partying on August Capital’s beautiful, sunny Sand Hill balcony on Friday, July 26. The party starts at 5:30 p.m. and goes til 9:00 p.m.
TechCrunch parties are a thing of legend. Case in point, back when TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington used to hold these ragers in his Atherton back yard; Box founders Aaron Levie and Dylan Smith met one of their first investors, DFJ. In 2010, we spotted 500 Startups’ Dave McClure writing a check to then stealthy startup Tello (which was recently bought by Urban Airship in December) at the August Capital party.
If you’re not able to make it to Sand Hill Road, TechCrunch is bringing much of the magic to our regional Meetups + Pitch-Offs. We’re visiting Seattle on July 18th and San Diego on August 22nd. We’re accepting applications for the Seattle pitch-off now.
About the 8th Annual Summer Party at August Capital
- July 26, 5:30 – 9:00 pm
- 2480 Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park CA 94025
- Get Tickets here, $80 based on availability. Tickets will be released in batches. Stay tuned to TechCrunch for releases as they sell out quickly.
Our sponsors help make Disrupt happen. If you are interested in learning more about sponsorship opportunities, please contact our sponsorship team here sponsors@techcrunch.com.
Socrata Raises $18M For Platform To Open Government Data
Socrata has raised $18 million to further the extension of its open-data platform now used at all levels of government to present information for the general public. The Series B round of financing was led by OpenView Venture Partners, with participation from existing investors Morgenthaler Ventures and Frazier Technology Partners.
The company has an open-data platform to pull information from silos where it has traditionally been stored. Socrata wraps the data and puts it in a modern interface for websites and through APIs. The cloud service is designed with connectors that allow the customer to schedule the delivery of the data from structured and unstructured databases.
I asked CEO and Founder Kevin Merritt about the NSA and how it correlates to Socrata’s work. He said Socrata has a platform at the other end of the spectrum designed to help put the government online to see what it is doing with the data and what can be built from it.
Socrata’s broad roadmap is to help civic developers build apps more efficiently. It recently introduced GovStat, which allows the customer to change the culture of government so it has a more data-driven approach.
Customers of the platform include San Francisco’s open government effort, the City of Chicago, Boston, Austin, the United Nations, the federal government as well as a number of other municipalities.
Socrata was founded in 2007 and raised a $6.5 million round in 2008.
Twitter Is Experimenting With New Live Events Platform, “DVR Mode” For Using Twitter With TV & More
Twitter CEO Dick Costolo today hinted at several upcoming features for the social media platform, including plans to address cyberbullying through the use of programmatic means, as well as better ways to filter the “signal from the noise” during live events, including something he referred to as a “DVR mode” for Twitter. These comments were made during a moderated panel this morning at the Center for Technology Innovation at Brookings.
On the former subject of cyberbullying, Costolo spoke of ongoing experiments with technological solutions that would better filter out “egregious, obvious harassment,” noting that the challenge facing the company is in finding a scalable solution to that problem. Twitter today has over 200 million active users every month, and the addition of celebrities, athletes politicians, and others the CEO dubbed “VIT’s” – “very important tweeters” – dramatically increase the usage of Twitter.
But even though the public nature of Twitter’s platform alleviates some of the potential for cyber bullying, Twitter also allows users to be anonymous, which can be a problem at times. On the one hand, anonymity makes it possible for people to express political commentary, but on the other, Costolo admitted it could also allow for trolling.
Twitter has to do a better job on the “Connect” stream to clean up the abusive, repeat and trolling posts, he said.
The CEO also talked about the challenge Twitter faces during live events. Early adopters will remember, of course, that the biggest problem used to be simply keeping Twitter online. It had once seemed like every time the late Steve Jobs took the stage to speak, Twitter would crash and display the infamous “fail whale” message indicating the service was down.
These days, the problem is no longer about stability, but making sense of all the data which flows in real-time.
“That ability to track and monitor the moments within an event, either as they happen or to catch up with them, is something we want to enhance,” said Costolo. “We want to make that experience even better, curating the moments within the event, the media from it, and making it that much easier to navigate.”
Costolo talked about how Twitter had tried, during the last Olympics, to curate and highlight tweets from athletes and news commenters, for example, but found that solution lacking. “The amazing thing about that was that you lost the roar of the crowd,” he said. Twitter no longer felt like the town square it aspires to be, but became more of an aggregator. That’s something which, later in the talk, Costolo explained is not Twitter’s role.
“Were not in the business of synthesizing and analyzing,” he said of the data on Twitter. “It’s the journalists and the news organizations in the world who will take all this info, and analyze and curate it as they’ve always done,” he explained.
To address the signal from the noise problem, Twitter is experimenting with a new live events tool which aims to keep that “roar of the crowd,” while still highlighting the key moments. Right now, keeping track of live events on Twitter is very basic – you’re essentially just following the tweets in reverse chronological order, the CEO explained.
“It would be nice to see things like a graphic of spikes in the conversation, what timed they happened…and be able to scroll back to that time to see what happened at that particular moment,” he said. And for planned events, like televised events, Costolo added that Twitter would like to offer that same functionality to users, even if they’re watching the event on delayed basis. He described this as being able to “follow along with Twitter in a DVR mode.”
That feature, likely birthed out Twitter’s acquisition of social TV analytics service Bluefin Labs, is still in the testing phase, but fits in with Twitter’s broader goal to become the default “second screen” application. In recent weeks, the company has launched TV ad targeting for Promoted Tweets, also powered by its acquisition of Bluefin Labs. And it announced broadcast partnerships with BBC America, Fox, Fuse and The Weather Channel, allowing networks to promote TV clips, as well as other deals with cable networks and content publishers. Plus, it partnered with Nielsen for Twitter TV ratings, too.
Costolo today touted Twitter’s position as the go-to second screen app, saying if he’s watching a major event on television and doesn’t have Twitter on hand, he feels like he’s “watching [TV] with the volume off.”
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