VersAudio Vers 2X for iPod

With hundreds of iPod speaker systems on the market these days it’s increasingly more of a challenge to stand out in the crowd. With its Vers 2X, Sprout Creation has attempted to do just that by going in the unusual direction of building its systems out of wood. The idea here is not just to make a unique-looking system but a unique audio experience as well, with wood offering up a noticeably different sound than the plastic and metal found on most competing systems.



I’ve used the Vers 2X as my primary speaker system for the past few weeks, and found some aspects of the product to be about what I was expecting while other aspects came as a surprise. I first tested out a wood-based system last year in the form of Speck’s Retro, so I more or less knew that the audio from the Vers 2X would sound more organic, some would say more natural, less digital if you will, than the typical iPod system. But what surprised me was that while the Retro was a fairly large unit, the Vers 2X is significantly more compact. In fact, while the images I’d seen of the unit had me expecting something roughly the size of Apple’s iPod Hi-Fi system, it turns out the Vers 2X isn’t much bigger than a loaf of bread.



That doesn’t stop the unit from putting out a powerful sound, though. It also comes with a remote which sports more features than the typical iPod system (though not necessarily every feature you’d want – I’ll get to that later). In what I hope will become an ongoing tradition for future iProng reviews, I asked Sprout Creation’s David Lauturi some questions to get a better understanding of why the Vers 2X was designed the way it was and how the product is crafted, as well as the decision-making process for the feature set…

Why did you go the unusual route of building an iPod speaker system out of wood?

Have you ever seen a plastic violin? Musical instruments have been made of wood for centuries and it’s the preferred material of most high-end speaker manufacturers; wood is simply the ideal sound enclosure material. The 9 mm thick wood in Vers provides a rigid, acoustically neutral cabinet …and it’s gorgeous, too. With the sea of plastic iPod systems out there, we felt the world was more then ready for sound quality.

Aside from the great sound qualities and the natural beauty wood brings to Vers, though, the entire product has been environmentally considered from end to end – we selected wood from local plantation sources, chose the most power efficient components available, even the packaging material is 100% post-consumer stock. Sustainable design as central to our mission.

How do you go about creating each individual unit?

There’s a good reason no one has made a wood iPod sound system yet – working with wood in mass production is a real challenge; it took quite a few prototypes to perfect our unique enclosure design. A plastic part, by contrast, can be popped out in less then a minute, without much effort and at a fraction of the cost. Like a guitar or a violin, each Vers cabinet takes over a week to produce by hand. The side benefit is that the hand-craftsmanship, in combination with the natural grain of the wood, assures that each system is unique.
 

What led you to make the feature choices you did, such as including the ability to navigate the iPod’s menus via the remote, but not including adjustable bass and treble?

In our past experience, there’s always pressure to add ‘just one more button’ to a remote, but our goal was simplicity – it takes a lot of focus include only what was absolutely needed. We wanted the user to be in full control and be able to drive their iPod from a distance – the menu navigation features are a big plus here – but an iPod itself has 22 discrete EQ settings; additional treble & bass controls weren’t necessary.

What other iPod or iPhone related products do you have in the pipeline beyond the Vers 2X?

Our ‘fans’ have actually told us loud and clear what they want from us next: a compact radio/alarm system that can live in any room in the house. We listened – the Vers 1.5R radio/alarm clock will be available on our site at the end of October on versaudio.com in the same four wood finishes as the Vers 2X: Cherry, Bamboo, Natural Walnut and Dark Walnut. It’s compact, but it puts out a lot of sound for its size.

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When it comes to the review process, my take on the Vers 2X is fairly straightforward: it sounds great for its size, and sounds noticeably more “natural” than similarly sized competing systems thanks to its wooden design. On the other hand, $180 is a lot of money for this level of sound quality; I’ve tested some competing systems that cost $150 and even $130 which, take away the “naturalness” and it could be argued that they sound just as good or even better – and while it’s true that you can adjust the EQ via the iPod itself, it’s quite rare to see an iPod speaker system in this price range that doesn’t have bass and treble controls on the remote.



I love the fact that the included remote control can be used to navigate up and down the iPod’s hierarchal menus. This means that as long as you’re close enough to read the iPod’s screen (which is more realistic with an iPod touch than with an iPod nano), you can find your way directly to any song, album, or any other piece of content on your iPod without having to go over and actually adjust the iPod itself. On the other hand, the remote is on the large side. Sure, it has fourteen buttons, but I’ve used competing remotes that have even more buttons and aren’t half as bulky.



In all, I think you’ve got to be attracted to the wood, either in terms of aesthetics or sound quality (or both), in order to make this a worthwhile buy. That having been said, if you do like the wood aspect of the Vers 2X, I think you’ll end up being happy with it.

Final rating: four stars out of five