Markandsaz wrote:

Hello Folks,

I recently purchased the A9, and while i am wowed by mostly everything about it, i have one problem, when i start airplaying from any of my mac devices, and i have them all, it will play for a few mins or a few seconds or an hour and it will just drop the music, sometimes i lose it (the A9) in the airplay menu and other times it is there in the menu but the music just stops, it is very frustrating, I spoke to the dealer and he told me it was my wifi, i also spoke with another actual B&O outlet with little help, however I did purchase the green cover from the dealer, very nice too!

anywho shall i take back the speaker on warranty, shall i change my internet, provider, upgrade my router?

any definitive help would be much appreciated

mb

Yendys wrote:

Run SSIDer and make sure your wifi is running in a clear channel (not overlapping with others nearby) run it when the homes around you are full of people so all wifi's are active. http://www.metageek.net/products/inssider/

I don't completely agree with this. Fixing your channel isn't always the right way to guarantee fewer dropouts. I tried fixing my channel, but the problem is, 99% of wifi networks are set to automatically set a channel and often they'll conflict with my fixed channel - meaning fixing does nothing to solve the 'clear channel' problem.

Instead of fixing your wifi channel, the best solution is to set a permanent IP on the A9. I had dropouts galore with my Playmaker - tried ethernet, setting a fixed wireless channel etc - but configuring the PM so it had a fixed IP address, sorted the dropouts.

moxxey wrote:

Instead of fixing your wifi channel, the best solution is to set a permanent IP on the A9. I had dropouts galore with my Playmaker - tried ethernet, setting a fixed wireless channel etc - but configuring the PM so it had a fixed IP address, sorted the dropouts.

First of all, your internet provider has nothing to do with this matter. So scratch that idea :)

I have the A9 and experienced similar problems. I solved it by buying a new router, in my case the Apple Airport Extreme.

Unfortunately Airplay is very sensitive to the wifi quality. This is a huge problem if you live in the city where the wifi frequencies are very congested. Most modern routers does a good job of automatically changing wifi channel.

Furthermore you should follow moxxey's advice about giving your devices a fixed IP address. This way you can prioritise your devices in the Network.

You should also think about the positioning of your router. Make sure it isn't shielded or the front of the router is faced away from your connected devices. The antennas in any router works best is a specific direction.

A quick fix would be if the A9 supported n or ac networks (currently only g networks are supported). This lack of support for the newest standards are due to the Airplay chip manufactured by a supplier appointed by Apple. In other words, it's not B&O fault that you are forced to use the over congested g-network.

With most routers you can assign a (fixed) IP address to the devices with their unique MAC address. Assign an IP that is not in the DHCP-pool, and leave all the devices in default.

Much easier if you want to move a NAS, A8, A9, Beolit or whatever to another wifi network.

I don't know if it helps for dropouts, but also my iPhone and iPad have a fixed IP address this way.

Don't forget the possibility to connect the A9 via wired ethernet instead of wifi. Today most of us have a lot of wireless units on our networks - which makes the network slower and filled with data. Moving the A9 to a wired connection would directly cut the wifi traffic on a airplay-session in half (just your iPhone or other device transmitting over wifi).  

And if your router supports 5 GHz, try moving all your clients that support it to that. If the device sending the music is on the 5 GHz network it saves half the traffic for the 2,4 GHz network. 

5 GHz is perfect for small appartments in the city; fewer people using it and the range is shorter.