Multi-room, mostly wire-free audio is a hassle. And its almost never seamless.
A breed of Apple Airplay-compatible speakers has been around for a while, but they all tended to be quite ugly. I ended up liking the styling of the Libratone Zipp; classic Danish design, good reviews, solid sound from a wireless speaker with Airplay and Bluetooth built-in - sounds ideal!
Its not cheap; $320. And I’m sorry to say, its rubbish.
- Pairing it over WiFi is a disaster (can’t see the network, struggle to associate), and generally requires you to reset the speaker if you change the SSID or password
- The WiFi chip must be encased in solid lead, because even if its right next to the AP, it can’t connect
- Who builds a WiFi speaker that only has a 2.4GHz chip in it ?
- The audio quality is iffy at best, and is generally not memorable
- When you do miraculously get it powered, associated and playing music, it hardly goes 5 minutes without cutting out and requiring you to power it off and on again
On the positive side, its pretty, and the Bluetooth works well - but then I would have bought something else and saved $100. Sigh.
I am trying hard not to get into the Sonus ecosystem, but they’ve been around for a while, and it must be because they do things properly.
PS. Please don’t point to my WiFi network. I have RRD graphs that prove coverage and connection-rate density where the speaker was placed, tested and moved around are good
