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Multi-room

Audio Pro Addon series

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Sweden’s acclaimed speaker manufacturer Audio Pro has an interesting range of Multi-room products called the addon series. It consists of the midsize speaker addon C5, the larger speaker addon C10, the wireless sub addon C-SUB and the Link 1 which is connected to an existing setup. The brand is known for their sound quality and has been around since the seventies.

All the speakers supports Spotify Connect, Apple AirPlay and Bluetooth 4.0. They also support Tidal, TuneIn, Deezer and more through the Audio Pro multiroom app for iOS and Android. Up to five speakers can be grouped together in the app. Supported audio formats are MP3, WMA, AAC, FLAC and Apple Lossless. They can be played from a local NAS.


Addon C5 is a mid range speaker with a 40W Digital class D amplifier, 2 x 3⁄4” textile dome tweeters and a 4” long throw woofer. Apart from Wi-Fi and Bluetooth it inputs RCA and 3.5 mm stereo. The speaker was awarded product of the year 2017 by what hifi in the category Best wireless speaker £200-£500.

Addon C10 is the larger speaker with a 80W Digital class D amplifier, 2 x 3⁄4” textile dome tweeters and a 5.25” long throw woofer. It has the same inputs and outputs as C5.

Link 1 is an adapter that attaches to an existing system through 3.5mm stereo or TOSlink optical. Thus enabling wireless music on that system. A cost effective upgrade if you already have invested in a system.

Addon C-SUB delivers even more bass to the system through Wi-Fi or RCA. It connects automatically to the closest speaker in the system. It has a 200W Digital class D amplifier, a 6.5” long throw woofer and 2 x 7.5″ passive radiators.

Conclusion

The Audio Pro system has broad support for the key protocols and services in the multi-room market, is award winning and competitively priced compared to Sonos. So it should be considered when going multi-room.

Multi-room

Audio pro

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Audio pro has a new wireless multi-room product line caled the living series, which is aimed at providing a complete multi-room solution. According to Audio pro it is not evolution, it is a revolution. So lets go through some facts about the system architecture.

1. Own dedicated network. As with Sonos, the Audio pro devices communicates (mainly streams audio) through a separate Audio pro wireless network. This makes the installation easier and the music distribution more reliable.

2. Sending music is done through the WF100 dongle that can be attached to a Computer through USB (where it replaces the system sound card) or with any music device that has a line out.(TV, Android, iPhone, iPad, stereo). So great source support BUT the mayor drawback is that your source can’t send different streams to different zones at the same time. So you can’t play Spotify in zone one and internet radio in zone two simultaneously if your only source is a PC. You need a second source to achieve that. Like going to your stereo and start a cd that is streamed to zone one and then go to your computer and start Spotify that is played in zone two.

3. Receiving music is done with either Audio pro speakers with built in receiver for this system. Or it can be done with the RX100 receiver attached to a line in at any audio system.

4. Given the architecture of the system there are no remoting apps that can control what are played in multiple sources like the ones that exist for Sonos and Squeezebox. This is of course a major drawback. Audio pro recommends using the iPad app Splashtop remote (which is a remote desktop app that clones your computer desktop) for controlling what your computer plays in one zone.

Compared to Sonos and Squeezebox, Audio pro lacks a unified remote system for controlling what will be played in which zone. It cant play Spotify in different zones at the same time with the same account, as Sonos and Squeezebox can. But if you are looking for an easy way to stream music from your old stereo across the house or to stream from your computer, Audio pro could be what you need.