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Reviews (1)
21 Dec, 2016
Fabulous Sound but Play-Fi software is a miserable experience
To start off: the speakers are great. The build quality and sound quality are excellent (better than the Sonos to my ear). However the Play-Fi system is really not ready for prime time. When it works, which is about 60% of the time, it's great. When it doesn't work, which is all to often, it's annoyingly frustrating.
I have a total of 6 speakers in the house using the Play-Fi system. Typical problems I see on a consistent basis:
1. Spotify groups just don't work well. Sometimes one or more of the speakers simply doesn't start up.
2. Sometimes all of the speakers start up, but at least one does not show up in the Play-Fi control app so even though it's playing the right thing, I can't control the volume.
3. Every once in a while the system starts up fine, but one of the speakers will be out of synch (like a half a second) with the others.
4. The implementation of Spotify groups (which is what allows you to use multiple speakers playing the same thing) is really bad. You can't define more than one group that contains the same speaker. So for instance I can't define an "all" group that contains all of my speakers and then subsequently define a "bedroom only" group. Nope, can't do it. You have to remove the bedroom speakers from the "all" group before you can put them in the "bedroom" group. That makes switching between sets of speakers a miserable process.
5. Don't try to use a phone to control the volume unless you like really loud music. The volume control sliders are really hard to control and at the low end of the scale a very small movement of your finger results in a huge change in volume. This can be mitigated by using a tablet where the screen resolution is much better (haven't managed to install the PC version yet, that could be the potential answer).
In the end, I absolutely love the sound I get out of these things when they're working. However every single time I try to use them I end up repeatedly having to fiddle around with the configuration of the system in order to get them all going at the same time. I'm geek enough to be able to survive, but my family doesn't have a prayer of controlling the system.
If you only buy one speaker it will probably work GREAT. If you buy more than one, well be prepared for great sound but frustrating contol.