[Stan]

I recently went through a wifi battle brought about from the purchase of a very inexpensive 2nd hand Halo. With my older Orbi mesh, it could not find any of my devices. I guess it’s time to upgrade.  Bought a pair of Amplifi Alien (made by the same company that makes Unifi) and out of the box, everything looked great.  I could initialize my Halo, all my devices were working, “wow, that was easy”… until later in the day when the wifi disappeared. I had issues with the 2nd one, too.  I tried troubleshooting with Amplifi tech support (actually fairly good experience), but no dice, returned them… back to the Orbi, and luckily my Halo stayed configured… However, I was still on the hunt for new wifi equipment.

More research led me to a pair of Asus XT9s. It is tri-band meaning it has 3 radios to support 2.4, 5 and 5.9GHz (wifi6). Out of the box, they worked OK, but I had a lot of problems with devices being dropped. There’s a huge number of Asus router posts in on-line forums so there was a lot of suggestions to be tried, and through various tweaking, I got them to work well (touch wood).  I haven’t had a device disappear in 2+ days (it was 2 days ago that I stopped tweaking).  This is what I did that seemed to work:

1. Fixed IPs for all B&O devices
2. Set fixed channels for 2.4 and 5GHz channels
3. Set 2.4Ghz channel width to 20MHz (40 can theoretically have higher throughput, but it also may cause interference)
4. Turned off 160Mhz channel width for 5GHz channel
5. Turn off all the fancy features, anything with “smart” in the name.
6. Turn off beam forming on everything but the intra-router backhaul channel (5.9Ghz)

So, why buy a fancy router with all these neat features and then turn them all off?  Because I have a lot of older devices on my network (I would consider all pre-Mozart beosounds to be “older”) that seem to get confused by this stuff.  Yes, these features are mostly supposed to be backward compatible, but that is only what the specifications say, not necessarily what gets implemented in products.  Also, these features generally support higher bandwidth and better roaming. I don’t believe my devices need higher bandwidth, and most are fixed in terms of placement. I am seeing better wifi performance with my phone and laptop so there is something to gained (although maybe this is just placebo… I didn’t run any speed tests before/after).

The one thing I haven’t tried is re-setting up my Halo.  On the one hand, my Halo is working fine so why mess with success? Then again, if it doesn’t work, maybe I should look for different routers… however, then I’d be without my Halo until I found some new routers that actually worked which seems much more difficult than it should be. Yes, I like my Halo (not at $900, but at $150 it’s a neat device). Roll the dice…

[Stan]

My old router doesn’t have many options with respect to setting up 2.4 vs 5 Ghz networks. One time during this diagnosis, I tried turning off the 5GHz SSID broadcast, rebooted the devices I wanted to be on 2.4GHz, then turned the 5GHz SSID back on.  The Halo went right back to 5Ghz as did some of the other devices.

The new router, when it worked, worked fine without any of these games.

Right now, the Halo is still working just fine on the old router after doing 1st time initialization on the new router. No reason to mess with success.

[Stan]

Spoke too soon about the Amplifi Alien. It worked wonderfully for all of about 8 hours. Then my wife says “why is the internet so slow?”.  I check my router, and there are only a few devices connected, and my phone is getting very weak coverage standing right next to it.  I do the reboot, factory reset dance with no luck. Let it sit overnight unplugged. This morning still not working well. Support thinks maybe the wifi6 radio has “glitched”.  Fine, every once in a while you get a lemon. Better 1 day into ownership than warranty period + 1 day.

“Luckily”, I have a 2nd one that I was planning to mesh to the first. Let’s give it a try. Fires right up and we’re back in business. I have to change the DHCP address because I forgot one of my devices still has a fixed IP address. Oops. Now, I’m getting crap coverage again. What’s this “additional 5GHz radio” option. I’ll turn that on. Now we’re in business again. Must have gotten switched off somehow. Let’s get these IoT devices into their own sandbox. Oops, where did all my 2.4GHz devices go? Why can’t my wifi analyzer see any 2.4GHz signals? I’ll turn that back off, but still no 2.4GHz network. Now, the wife is complaining again, and I don’t blame her.  She’s on the far side of the house where 2.4GHz kind of works, but there’s no 2.4GHz any more.

Back to the Orbi. All devices are connected and happy again.  Even my Halo!  It must be there’s something about the Halo initialization that was getting stomped on by the router. Now that it’s initialized, no problems so far.

Now, I’m in a quandary. When the Alien worked, it really worked well. Am I just extremely unlucky? Should I have them send me a new one and say 3 strikes and you’re out or is 2 for 2 bad enough to stop wasting my time.  But if not Amplifi, then who? On the internet forums, everybody hates their router 😀 (yes, happy people tend not to post about how happy they are). Oh well.

 

[Stan]

We have a conclusion:

I installed a new router (Amplifi Alien), reset/rebooted the Halo and all my problems went away :D.  I haven’t installed the mesh node yet, but I trust ubiquiti / amplifi to have their internet stuff buttoned down.  You can buy an Alien from the Amplifi website for $199 which is less than 1/2 of what it was selling for a while ago.  Maybe this means it is reaching end of life, but I don’t think I have tremendous network requirements so this should last a while (hopefully).

My other option was to put the Orbi into Access Point mode and see if my Xfinity/Comcast router was any smarter, but I didn’t bother with this because the Amplifi router seems to be working very well.

So far, there doesn’t seem to be any need to segregate devices to different frequency bands. Time will tell.

[Stan]

Are you suggesting removing all of my products from the app, and then re-adding them?  I guess I could try this. I do have 9 products so this will be kind of annoying.

I’m heading down another path at the moment.  I’m using Wireshark to look at the network traffic to maybe see what is or isn’t happening. Learning about mDns.

[Stan]

I am having this same problem with a Halo I just bought 2nd hand.  App talks to remote just fine.  Remote shows up in router just fine.  Upgraded to newest software release just fine. However, remote cannot see any of my devices.

I am curious what you may have done when you say you used “different wifi channels”.

Anyone have any insight here?  Could my Orbi mesh network be the problem (even though all my other devices – BLC, Balance, BS1, BS2, M3 all work fine)?

Halo information on the internet is sparse.

Thanks in advance.

[Stan]

Unfortunately, it appears they are just following the lead of almost all the other home product related apps on my phone.  They all have sections that hawk new and improved products, replacement parts, upgrades, etc.  Some of the worst ones make your scroll through that crap before you actually get to the useful features of the app.  At least B&O has placed this behind an easy to ignore button vs. integrated to the main product operation flow.

[Stan]

Has B&O mgmt actually said they’re trying to be like Rolex/Hermes or is it just commenters on this site? I agree that timeless veblen electronics is wishful thinking.

However, what is their path forward if they don’t go upmarket. HiFi is dead. Long live the bluetooth/ stand alone speaker.

[Stan]

Thanks MM and Carolpa.

In the past, I was able to start the ML source on another device and join the Balance via the app. Yesterday, this wasn’t working.  It would only boop or double boop. If my memory is not too faulty, the app has changed so that instead of it showing the converter linked to the BS1 (for example), it now shows the converter as the “master” link source no matter how the source is started, and all the other devices are linked to it.  Subtle difference and probably makes more sense, but I was afraid they messed up Mozart with this enhancement. Today, it is working again.  Go figure.

This is also how I listen to lossless WMA files from my BeoMaster 5 disk. With the Balance, I can select a song and it plays the song and stops.  With the BS1, it plays the song and the next and the next, etc.  So I start the music on the BS1, mute the volume, join the Balance. Although to be honest, I generally just stream unless I’m feeling “old school”.

I would guess they dropped ML support in Mozart because, in my experience, every manager and software developer hates backward compatibility so they saw their chance with a “next generation” product to drop it, and they did. I mean how far back does backward compatibility need to go?  Customer says “forever”.  Manager says “never”. They fight it out, and we get what we get.

[Stan]

I really don’t know what other choice they have.  The general population doesn’t care about HiFi. I remember when there were hifi stores all over the place.  They’re all gone, except for a handful that mostly do custom installations. How do you do “consumer electronics” when most consumers just don’t care enough to drop big $$$ on it. If you’re going to find a niche, it might as well be VHNWI since that’s where the money is. I’d rather they do this than sell out to Harmon or some other conglomerate (or worse, private equity) who will a) immediate drop support for any old products integration and b) produce watered down badge engineered garbage (like the car audio division). I’m not a VHNWI so I’m not happy about this direction, but again, what choice do they have. I can admire from a far.

Obviously, they should do better with their software, and they’ve probably lost a fair margin of customers who bought a less expensive product and had software issues and cross B&O off their list.  Then again, show me 1 company that does great software. Even Apple is bad now. My wife hates here newer iPhone… glitchy, buggy, etc. Customers have shown companies that they’ll tolerate buggy software by continuing to buy it so software managment say “good enough” far too early. I’d love to stop this, but I don’t know how. If I promised to never buy buggy software, I’d have no software at all!

 

[Stan]

It seems they’re redesigning some of the TV controls. I can no longer move the stand on my Eclipse gen1. They replaced the text option “stand” with a cute icon, but pressing the icon does nothing.  Same with the TV remote control features. Instead of the text “remote control” that took me to screens that allowed me to control my TV similar to the actual beoremote1, I get a cute icon that does nothing. Optimistically, I’m hoping this was a stupid oversight/build error that will be fixed soon. I can’t see them taking these function away since they were working quite well. Then again, you never know the depths to which software may sink.

[Stan]

If you really want Alexa support, just get an Alexa product with an audio output and connect it to the Balance line in connector.

[Stan]

I’ve finally been hit with a non-working “improvement”.  I’m not in the beta program, but with latest Android release (5.9.0.24…). The TV remote feature no longer works with my Gen1 Eclipse. I also can no longer control the stand. They’ve redesigned the interface so I get a cute little remote icon replacing boring words, but pressing it does nothing.  Similarly, there’s an icon for moving the stand that doesn’t work either. 2 steps forward, 6 steps back..

At least the beoremote1 works, but it is sometimes more convenient to use the app if the remote is not near or lost in the couch.

Then again, aside from Sonos, every one complains about their “smart speaker” apps (e.g. Kef, Klipsch, Naim Muso). Doesn’t mean it’s acceptable, but at least we’re not alone.

[Stan]

I have an older Orbi setup:  one base, 2 satellites.  I have an Eclipse, BS1, BS2, 2 Essences, M3 and a BS5 linked via an airport express all connected via WiFi.  I have a pair of Balances (daisy chained) and a BL/NL converter wired to the base station.  There’s also a couple TVs and variety of smartphone, computers, printers all on the same mesh.

I highly recommend the suggestion to assign fixed IP addresses to all of the B&O devices. Before I did that, things were pretty flakey.  Now, for the last maybe 2 years, my B&O equipment is quite stable. The balances have hiccuped a few times, but this seems more from the daisy chained network connection.  I say this because, once or twice, I’ve had to completely reset them, and they only seem to reset correctly if I removed the network cable, set them up wirelessly, then plug them in to the router.  I have thought about running them wirelessly to see if this changes anything, but then I go a long while with no problems so why change anything?

 

[Stan]

I have a pair of bw1s that act like this.  LEDs behave normally, but, over the period of a year (iirc), they went from sporatic sound, then no sound. They mostly worked when new.

[Stan]

From my experience, older B&O devices are built well so 20 years is not that old.  Then again, there are some trends – BL3s rubber coating can get sticky, BL4s have some issue which I don’t recall (power supply maybe?), certain older BL4000s have sound dampening material that degrades and damages the circuit boards.  Meanwhile, my 20-ish year old BL4000s, 8000s and 1s are working without problem and give no indication that they’re running short of life.  A lot probably depends on how they were treated over their lifetime.

I don’t know if I’d recommend the BS5 Encore.  I have no experience with it.  It didn’t seem like B&O ever put much into it.  Maybe I’m wrong, but in my recollection, it kind of came and went pretty fast.  It runs linux under the covers so while it looks like the BS5, it’s quite a different piece of kit.  I have a non-Encore BS5, and it is running fine but is on its 2nd mother board.  Then again, if it suits your needs and the price is right, why not?  However, I don’t think it plays CDs directly (need to digitize), and if you’re going to digitize, you might be better off with an Essence Mk2, Core or Core Connect.  No B&O wow (as these are mostly meant to be hidden away), but much less to break.

I don’t know much about the BeoCenter 2.  Seems like the wings sometimes need repair and there might be a long-term durability issue with the translucent metal controls and maybe the laser, but don’t take my word for it.  Never had one or paid much attention to it when it was a current product.

I haven’t heard the A5 or Emerge.  I really like my Balance, BS2 and BS1. The stereo pairing of the Balances works fine so I would assume the same about the A5 and Emerge.  I imagine a stereo pair of A5s or Emerges would sound very good.  However, if you like loud music, I don’t think Emerge is the right way to go (according to one of Steve from Sounds Heavenly videos).  To my ears, the newer Beosounds are more dynamic/punchy whereas the BeoLabs are sort of flat (not necessarily in a bad way).  It’s personal preference.

I know, I know, a lot of rambling and not much else.  However, no one else answered so I thought I’d share what I know about your questions which isn’t much.  In the end, it’s personal preference.  We all hear differently.  We all think some products look better than others.  I don’t think there’s any one right answer.

[Stan]

From the user guide:
“Note: You might need to configure your TV to send out stereo sound (PCM) only. Beoconnect Core cannot decode surround sound formats, such as Dolby Atmos, which are the default on some televisions.”

Most TVs are not set to PCM as default. You may need to dig around in your TV’s audio menus to find how to set it to PCM instead of the default.

[Stan]

NEVER MIND:  I read through the manual, and it is only Beosonic unless you have a Shape.

Hi Razlaw,

Does the Core Connected have any advanced sound settings beyond the “Beosonic” equalizer? I just noticed in the latest BeoApp release there are some new advanced sound settings for my Balances and curious if these are Mozart settings or specific to Balance settings.

Thanks

[Stan]

If it offered value above the beoapp, I’d have no problem paying for it.  However, I don’t think the beoapp is so terrible.

[Stan]

sk8man wrote:

And about streaming NRadio to your Beolabs, I think the Beo App can handle it solo, no need for an audio master.

This has not been my experience.  When I choose a B&O Radio station while having my BLC selected, I get a “Something went wrong” error.

[Author]

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