A premium iPod dock war, is set to break out in Australia between the new Bose Soundock 10 and a new Mini Zeppelin from UK Hi Fi Company Bowers & Wilkins.

Shown for the first time last night at the opening of a Bowers and Wilkins studio in Sydney the new Zeppelin Mini will go on sale in November for $599.

The big brother Zeppelin which sells for $1,200 has been described by critics as the best iPod dock in the world. The smaller Mini version which is set to be in big demand,  streams digital data directly from a music device using what the British Hi Fi company says is an audiophile-grade digital-to-analogue (DAC) converter, bypassing the DACs in the music players.

Zeppelin Mini is fully remote-controlled, offering all of the music-access virtues of the Apple iPod and iPhone. Other features include the use of two newly developed, full-range, 3-inch fiberglass drivers for full-bodied sound; two leading-edge Class D (digital) amplifiers ensure plenty of power (18W each) from ultra-compact, nearly cold-running circuitry; and automatic adaptation to any AC power standard, from 100V to 240 V.

At the Sydney launch last week of the Bose Soundock 10, the US company showed off  a pair of proprietary Twiddler transducers (a combination of a high-frequency transducer and midrange driver; in other words, a speaker) which the company claims makes a big difference to the sound output from their iPod attach device.

Both the Bowers & Wilkins Mini Zeppelin and the Bose SoundDock 10, which will sell for $600, are fairly expensive systems but well worth the money when compared to a host of other offerings.

Geoff Mathews is Managing Director of Convoy who are the distributor of the Bowers & Wilkins range in Australia. Mr. Matthews said “We believe that the new Mini will be extremely popular. We have had a lot of success with the larger Zeppelin dock and if the response from retailers is anything to go by we have a winner” he said.

Substantially smaller then the Zeppelin, the Zeppelin Mini “attains the same high standard of sound quality, and delivers astounding clean volume potential, deep-bass impact and extension from a more compact package,” said Lars Hundborg the CEO of B&W Group Asia Ltd who was in Sydney to offically open the new Bowers & Wilkins store which is located at the Audio Solutions store in Mascot.