We’ve been hoarding most of our newest discoveries for our Holiday 2005 Buyers’ Guide (coming next week), but something arrived today that was too interesting not to show off straight away. Though it hasn’t gone through our rigorous testing yet, Tivoli Audio’s iSongBook ($329) may well wind up becoming the premium iPod speaker buyer’s pick of choice. Put aside the price for a moment, and just take a quick gander at the checklist of features it offers.
First, there’s the Tivoli name, which inspires a lot of passion amongst the audiophile crowd, and the styling, which shares a lot in common with the company’s earlier iPAL speaker for the iPod. You still get the (largely) waterproofed silver and white enclosure, rubberized knobs and port covers, and metal speaker grilles. Well, that last part is one letter inaccurate. With iPAL, you got one speaker grille. With iSongBook, you get two.
There’s not only a second speaker, but Tivoli’s actually made it detachable – a holy grail of sorts for dedicated iPod speaker design. Then, as you’ll notice on the left, there’s an iPod dock – not just any iPod dock, but a true “universal dock,” as Apple has put it, and the first one we’ve seen on a third-party accessory. Tivoli includes seven Dock Adapters (1-7, for those keeping count since our review of the Apple Universal Dock), which is enough to cover every size of iPod from 3G to 4G and mini. iPod nano and 5G owners get Dock Adapters with their iPods.
Tivoli’s dock flips down from iSongBook’s side, and like Apple’s Universal Dock, inserting or removing different-sized Dock Adapters is a snap. If you don’t want the dock down, just fold it back up into the speaker enclosure.
The two speakers are connected to one another through a retractable cable on the right speaker’s back. Winding and unwinding the cable is a manual process – better, in our view, than a cheap spring-loaded mechanism – and provides roughly 6 feet of separation between the right speaker and the iSongBook enclosure.
Attaching the speaker to the system relies on metal nubs and rubberized ports, a good choice for a sturdy fit.
A quick study of iSongBook’s rear reveals a large battery compartment, which is sealed with a screw on the unit’s bottom, ports for power and an auxiliary input, and an antenna. A headphone port is on the unit’s left side above the universal dock.
The battery compartment yields only one disappointment by comparison with iPAL, which featured a rechargeable battery: six AA batteries are used to provide power. Truthfully, it’s hard to complain much about this, given that iSongBook actually runs off of batteries, which is more than can be said for certain other speaker systems in its class.
And what can iSongBook do when powered on? There’s a digital AM/FM radio on board, tuned via a backlit LCD screen. Five presets are available for AM and FM, plus an alarm, a sleep timer with a 20-minute countdown, and a digital volume knob that runs from 0 to 30. On the far left center of the system is a dark red circle, which interfaces with the included remote control.
