Griffin’s latest iPod speaker, the Amplifi, is about as simple as they come, and the price tag won’t leave you wishing you hadn’t just bought that $4 Starbuck’s cafe mocha. The sound is a lot better than you’d expect for a $150 speaker and can fill a 15 by 15 foot living room with little problem. The included infrared remote doesn’t give you total control over your iPod, and the speaker lacks any tone controls or video outputs, but the Amplifi’s no-frills (but still elegant) design keeps the price down and the quality up.
The Amplifi’s matte black rectuangular wooden enclosure has silver sides that extend below the speaker to raise it, letting the 5-inch woofer fire straight down to give the two 2.75-inch front drivers help with the bass. In the middle of the black metal grille on front there’s a single knob that’s surrounded by a blue light when the speaker is powered on. The speaker is fairly compact at 13.75 by 8.75 by 5.5 inches (about the size of a toaster oven/broiler) and comes with an AC adapter, but there’s no battery power option.
A universal iPod dock on top works with the iPod Mini up through the current generation, and you get several rubber inserts so your iPod fits securely in the dock. You can also use the speaker with any other audio source via the eighth-inch line-in jack on the back and the included audio cable.
Operation couldn’t be any simpler: Push the knob to turn the speaker on, and turn it to adjust the volume. The IR remote gives you plenty of range for a small room and lets you control play/pause, track skip, volume, and power — that’s it. Not that you’d want to squint at the iPod’s 2.5-inch screen from 10 feet away for menu navigation, of course.
I’m very impressed at the speaker’s construction, which is solid enough that I couldn’t hear any vibrating or distortion even at top volume on loud tracks — highly unusual at this price point.
Here are the results of my listening tests:
Against Me!’s “I Still Love You Julia” sounds harsh and sibilant but that punk rock bass drum comes through with plenty of aggressiveness. On the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Power of Equality,” Flea’s high bass pops cut, but low notes are a bit muffled; the rest of the music sounds well balanced.
On John Coltrane’s “Blue Train” the ride and high hat cymbals sound a bit harsh, but the acoustic bass isn’t muddy, and you can hear the piano clearly. The mids (’Trane’s tenor sax) are muscular. Seu Jorge’s cover of “Rebel Rebel” sounds excellent: The acoustic guitar is extremely clear, and his baritone voice gets a little edge from the emphasized highs, making it sound very lively.
The Amplifi does pretty well with Led Zeppelin’s “What Is and What Should Never Be,” handling the quieter sections with enough delicacy; the rocking parts lack a little punch but everything is still clearly distinguishable. Marvin Gaye’s
“What’s Going On” fared best: Jamerson’s bass doesn’t get lost, and the vocals aren’t too in-your-face. The multilayered retains all of its individual elements even at top volume.
Griffin did a great job on the Amplifi, and the bass isn’t so overwrought that your neighbors will call you out for disturbing the peace. I’m most impressed with the overall clarity and integrity of the sound even at top volume — which serious rockers will no doubt take advantage of. For $150, you can’t do a whole lot better than this.
First saw this fantastic speaker on a Gizmodo showdown where it came out as the very best speaker for the price.
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/it-ends/ipod-dock-bracket-finale-altec-lansing-imv712-vs-griffin-amplifi-285573.php
After searching other sites and seeing generally great reviews, I decided to purchase it although I was going to use it with an iPhone and hadn’t seen anyone post up any experience with one.
First off, the speaker looks great. It has a clean manly look to it and feels solidly built. It’s a little on the beefy side, but perfectly portable and I often move it around the house depending on which room I’m going to be in. The knob has a very solid feel with a nice “clicking” when you turn the volume up or down. Cnet said in their review that they thought the front knob was wiggly and I’ve seen another review state that they had a hard time turning the volume up without turning off the unit. I’ve haven’t experienced this at all so perhaps Griffin has adjusted the unit since earlier reviews. The lowest volume setting doesn’t get whisper quiet as some others had mentioned so it might be tough to go to sleep with if that’s something you’re interested in.
Sound played through my iPhone sounds fantastic. Full, solid bass that you would swear a speaker set this small just wouldn’t be able to produce. The highs are clean and the vocals really stand out. With strong bass, other systems often get a muddy, overwhelmed sound to the vocals and that’s not the case with this unit. Even though the speaker doesn’t come with bass and treble adjustments, just picking a different EQ setting tweaks the sound for personal taste.
The phone works extremely well with the speaker and far better than I had anticipated. This isn’t a shielded speaker so you can get interference if you don’t switch to airplane mode. Having said that, I’m running in normal mode now and after five hours of listening, I’m not hearing any of the usual crackle and blips. Through extended testing, I’ve managed to finally hear it during quiet sections of a song, but the sound is more subdued than I’ve experienced in other speaker units. Because of that, I plan to leave the phone in normal mode so that I can still receive calls.
The phone immediately starts playing music when you turn on the speaker set which is pretty cool. The phone is also charged while plugged in, but only when the speaker is turned on. If you leave the phone in the iPod mode, the screen will stay on and you can see the album art. After a while, it dims down, but still remains on. If you track forward or backward, the screen will come to full brightness again. The remote lets you play and pause the music, and as just mentioned, it allows track control. This allows you to easily jump forward and backward a track as well as fast forward or reverse through the track by holding down the button. This is something I didn’t expect to work with the phone so it’s really cool that it does. There’s a blue ring around the center control knob which flashes when it receives a command from the remote. This is a great way to visually see that the speaker is getting the commands you are trying to send it, especially if you’re further away and stretching the limits of the remote’s range. I’ve tried the remote from about 20-25 feet and it works fine.
In summary, I think this is an outstanding unit that has a really great sound and surprisingly strong integration and control over the iPhone. If I were to ask for any additional features, I would like to have a digital radio tuner with presets. Otherwise, I would say this is a nearly perfect speaker set.