Music | Bowers & Wilkins Reviews

MusicBowersWilkins is supposed to make it easy to connect music to your Formation soundbar. However, the soundbar itself is horribly designed because it requires MusicBowersWilkins and is completely intertwined with it. The tv remote can turn the volume up and down but if the tv is turned down to zero, the soundbar is still playing sound! You must use MusicBowersWilkins to turn the master volume up and down. This has caused roughly 4 million headaches in my house - from sound playing when no one wants it to the speaker being SUPER LOUD when the tv volume shows 25%.

I hate this soundbar. It would be 75% better if they could fix the software on it so it did not require MusicBowersWilkins . That extra 25% would be to provide an HMDI input instead of solely optical. What is this, 2003? I’d return it if I could but instead I’ll be forced to sell it. The sound is no better out of this soundbar and bass combo than Bose or even Sony or JBL.

Does MusicBowersWilkins connect to play music? Maybe. But the downfalls of the soundbar are worse than you could imagine.

Great app, but my formation audio doesn't switch from Roon to optical in when I pause Roon and turn on sound from optical in. Same goes for AirPlay to optical in. Auto detect input is turned on.
(Changed review as developer helped me sort the other problem out)

So there was at One time a different app to control my Zepplin 2 but now it suddenly disappeared and my speaker is deemed useless apparently? I can’t even contact anyone and no one can give me any information. They archive the older models and people can’t use them so they need to buy new ones is that the goal?
For having such amazing products it’s really unfortunate that your apps and your control software are so poorly created and managed and there’s no way to contact anyone about these problems. Great customer service 👌🏽

Bowers & Wilkins had a functional app to set up and manage my formation speaker but I found it was recently replaced and I’m now required to use this Music app instead. I don’t need another streaming service, I just want to manage my device.

After downloading MusicBowersWilkins, I was required to create an account (which is not a feature imho) and verify my email before I can do anything.

Dear Bowers & Wilkins, I am still waiting for your verification message. Meanwhile, I have an expensive speaker that I can’t use.

Nothing stands out with this speaker and app. I’ve been using them now for a few days. It was not easy to setup with MusicBowersWilkins . After multiple failures, I found the reset button. I was able to setup the formation wedge from there. After moving the speaker around my condo and adjusting the bass & treble, I am able to get it to sound ok. Nothing remarkable like you would expect from B&W. A very localized sound.

MusicBowersWilkins is a big step forward and brings B&W closer to Sonos’ standard; however, MusicBowersWilkins was clearly not designed for more than 8 or so speaker zones as it is impossible to scroll through the full list of zones to add them (the last few are covered by the master volume control). Not cool, and not what I’d expect of B&W. I’m not even sure I can use my “end of the alphabet” rooms anymore in multi room mode...

We never know if it will connect. Some times it does and sometimes no matter what you do working on all aspects of connection simply will not work. We have no idea why they insist on forcing someone to use such a shoddy app instead of the way it was before. Just terrible. We own 3 B&W home systems and this simple is not the quality we expect from this company.

When playing music in Spotify, I often lose the ability to control the volume unless I go into the B&W music app. I have to disconnect my Formation space and reconnect it. Would appreciate help!

Lovely speaker though.

*Updated after April release. Volume control issues appear resolved!

For my sins I bought much of the formation line of products - great design, good sound, and the worst software in the known universe. The original app was buggy, incapable of “learning” any remote control, and presented a winning combo of horrible UX and UI. This new abomination is probably even worse, as it struggles to deal with complex issues such as volume control. Welcome to the 20th century, BW and whoever your software partners are. Btw, most of us live in the 21st.

So I buy this expensive product, use it for a couple of years, but now I can’t continue to it unless I download this new app that REQUIRES your email address.

Well, this is the ultimate way to lose customers. It is a premium product, so the people who buy it are not expecting Facebook type tricks. Last B&O product I will ever buy.

What a reprehensible company.

Regretting buying it. Poorly designed. Takes you ages back rather than forward. Never thought it will turn out so poor. Why do you guys make people spend thousands of dollars on products that are not ready to be launched.

I assume that if you link a service, you can probably control volume there but I just have the TV plugged into a formation bar. I’m amazed that B&W has managed to make an already crappy app experience even crappier. At least they know how to make speakers.

Their old app sucked & this one does as well. This one won’t even let me register. Have tried verifying my email at least 4-5 times. Has never been able to be programmed to a regular TV remote software is complete trash. Very frustrated with B&W...

Cannot Sign up after trying for two days

An app to support a high end sound system should be high end. MusicBowersWilkins is a disgrace. I’ll be sticking to Roon which is world class, has incredible sound quality and system control. Who came up with this abominable idea?

I Love my formation Duos however, MusicBowersWilkins needs some work. B&W needs to finish the Music app and combine it with the control app ASAP. The Formation speakers are class speakers and all they needs is a complete app.

I was looking forward to Apple music hi-res. Unfortunately it is still unclear, how I can listen to the hi-res audio will MusicBowersWilkins or just me iPhone, on my formation duo wirelessly.

It's iPhone app, needs iPad portrait and landscape version. I don't use streaming services so app needs to access device music library.

Cannot properly save password. Loses connection to cloud and cannot even sign in. Wow great to purchase a 1500 speaker and have an app that doesn’t even work. Guess I’ll be returning it!

After linking up all my services, MusicBowersWilkins displays a No Spaces Found message instead of playing the music. Doesn’t even work with Airplay or headphones either. Pretty useless.

I am a bit disappointed and MusicBowersWilkins can only link to several online music portals rather than the musics at the phone.

iOS isn’t working. Says it cannot connect to cloud when trying to login.

Why isn’t there in app support for Spotify? Would infinitely improve MusicBowersWilkins

Very hard to tap device and control volume, needs rigorous test before release

Not able to connect to the cloud on ios nor android devices.

Too early release?