ARCHIVED FORUM -- March 2012 to February 2022READ ONLY FORUM
This is the second Archived Forum which was active between 1st March 2012 and 23rd February 2022
BeoNut since '75
Brilliant article Mr Elephant and yes, so much scope and yet...
we tend to forget there is more to design than designing.
From the article:
Apple might object to the idea of reduced license fees...
Gee, you think? Apple is one of the greediest companies out there. I doubt they actually are capable of realizing that reducing licensing fees and going for more market penetration makes sense. After all, they are so used to controlling the hardware and software sides both they seem incapable of really playing well with other manufacturers. Try using an aftermarket cable with a new product that uses the Lightning connector for example? Since they won't license the chip to other makers a third party cable will, at best, charge the thing only and even then not reliably. Of course they claim it's for your own good so they can guarantee the quality of your experience...yeah, and if you believe that I've got some ocean front property in Nevada to sell you.
B&O has already been stabbed in the back once at least for trusting Apple, re the change to the Lightning connector not long after B&O started selling Apple specific products. And AirPlay instability issues, a lot more of them than I'd expect if the AirPlay protocols were really well implemented.
iTunes seriously needs a lot of work, still, despite having years and years to work on it. It still mangles imported albums, sometimes I wonder if that's by design or they don't care because it is mainly meant as a vehicle for selling music, not to support what YOU might like, such as importing your own CDs well.
Jeff
I'm afraid I'm recovering from the BeoVirus.
I agree with Jeff. Airplay is comfortable, ok. But there's a big misinformation inside the article: You are not locked into a manufacturers ecosystem? Sorry, that's wrong. You ARE locked into Apples ecosystem! Dropouts are a problem with Airplay and it's simply dangerous to use an Airport express with an active speaker. If someone forgot the volume slider at high volume you could die of a spontaneous heart attack or your speakers could be destroyed.Apple is greedy, steels, sues and they only survive because they have the enormous power of still looking "cool" to 98% of its customers due to great marketing- no matter if the products are good or really bad.Listening to younger colleagues at work I'm REALLY surprised that they are impressed that the new notes app of IOS 9 will allow you to e.g. integrate photos. These are the moments I'm asking myself if nowadays generation doesn't use their brains. If such news are the only "amazing" things a company with >90.000 employees is able to put on the market, you should ask yourself what all those people there are doing all the time. Especially if such sorts of note apps where available (even with handwritten notes!) on a 10 year old Sony Clie TH55.Do some of you remember the old Yamaha Musiccast multiroom system? It's 10years old, was expensive, built like tanks (server and clients) and the setup was extremely easy. No configuring of passwords etc. Power on the server, power on the client, hit "auto configuration" and you where done. By the way: The new announced Musiccast system from Yamaha allows you to keep your 3rd party speakers etc, too because every Musiccast product seems to be able to act as a Bluetooth transmitter and receiver, too. This will allow easy integration of e.g. Beolit 15, A2 etc. into such a multiroom setup!Seeing nowadays products I'm often asking myself "Where's the progress?". Ok, there are colourfull programs to control the devices but it's often so slowly and uncomfortable and unreliable that it's unbelievable for the year 2015! I think B&O learned from the Airplay mistakes as we can see with the A9 2nd generation, Beolit 15, Beosound 8 etc. and it's fine that they try to be a little independent of the big bad Apple mothership. Apple "used" the Beocom 6000 scrollwheel technology for their first iPod and it's a shame B&O didn't patent this thing!If more and more manufacturers would turn their back to Apple they could built a better alliance to an high resolution audio standard. I don't know why WISA isn't used by more companies. Doesn't WISA allow the submission of e.g. transport commands, too?
Jeff:From the article: .....B&O has already been stabbed in the back once at least for trusting Apple ..... Jeff Beovirus victim, it's gotten to be too much to list!
I didn't read the link post, but just wanted to add that for a company who touts their meticulous testing of features before releasing things into the marketplace, AirPlay is such an unmitigated disaster.
It's one of the least reliable things that I use almost every day if that makes any sense. I stream youtube videos of my podcasts with it as well as music, and the dropouts and random disconnection, failure to "lock on" and even begin transmitting regularly are absolutely maddening. These problems even occurred with regularity when the ATV was hardwired with Ethernet.
I've said it before, but if I had to rely on AirPlay to make presentations professionally (as I believe some people do) I would absolutely lose my last piece of sanity.
Ah, you know... A little B&O here, a little there
Interesting comments. One thing though, i've never understood why people want 'cheap' lightning leads from other manufacturers when an iPhone is £600 or £700. Surely, that's false economy PLUS look at those people that are killed by using cheap branded iPhone chargers over in China. I'm totally for using original parts. PLUS, you can't blame Apple for changing from 30pin to Lightning. At the end of the day, B&O was well over 5 years too late to introduce the BS8. We were all buying the BOSE sound docks way back in 2005-6.
I've never had a problem over the years with my ATV but the A8 isn't brilliant with Airplay but thats in the guest room anyway (never liked the dull flat sound sadly - a purchase for design but crap sound).
Maybe the new ATV4 in 2 weeks time will re-address Airplay. For the rest, it looks as though Bluetooth has won the day :)
Beosound Stage, Beovision 8-40, Beolit 20, Beosound Explore.
In Apple's defence, I think you guys have forgotten how dull the Windows platform is and just how pleasant the Apple experience is. Come on, B&O is arrogant to both its customers and dealers. No customer service. PLAY range NOT repairable. Come on guys - and that's from a super expensive pretentious company. I'd love the H8s but they can't even use a quality Bluetooth chip! What the heck!
There is a reason why Apple appeals. It's nicely engineered, easy to use, have great user interfaces and they last. Apple customer service is incredible. I've just bought the new little MacBook Retina and quite frankly, it's the best computer that i've used in 20 years! It's that good. PLUS Final Cut Pro X video editing software knocks spots of its rivals AND a £230 for an Industry standard piece of software, it's amazing.
Yes Apple lost its soul when it got share holders and they've made some terrible mistakes like the cancer on a wrist smart watch and Apple Music/Beats buy which isn't needed but surely they are better than Samsung or whatever. Sometimes people just like to bash for the sake of it maybe because they don't have much else to do.
Firstly, let's get B&O back to being an honest company that fits quality components to ALL of its range. Bluetooth problems on the H8 are inexcusable, poor internals on the Moment just a joke, no repair available on the PLAY range - come on, what does that tell you???
Well, I have never had any problems with Airplay and I have two apple TVs and an Airport Express, I think there are too many variables involved to just say label Airplay as an Unmitigated Disaster - bit of a sweeping statement - it totally depends on your network, the router, the building you live in, whats around you causing intereference. I doubt it would have sold in its numbers if it was really that bad.
Why would you need cheaper Apple cables? Well, couple of reasons. First, you need more than one, one for each car, one for your desk, one for your chair in the living room, one for the kitchen where you throw your phone to charge it, etc. Also, the quality of the Apple ones leaves a lot to be desired, they fall apart with great regularity even in normal use, I've gone thru tons of them and I don't abuse them. Of particular vulnerability are the USB ends. Amazon is the only other brand I've seen that works, they must pay the licensing fees, they are big enough to absorb them I imagine, and their quality is actually superior to Apples.
I agree completely with assessments of iTunes. Originally, it was a pretty good, simple, way to manage your music for your iPod, and worked pretty well. Now, it's not, and after every upgrade there are one or three more pushed out in quick succession to fix the things they've bollixed up, and they still haven't addressed many core problems.
One thing I've never understood is why Apple gets so much love, but I do understand it, it's the triumph of form over function in people's minds. Coolness beats all. Both Microsoft and Apple stole from Xerox PARC (and before anyone tries revisionist history on me with this, I have hired and worked with ex PARC s/w engineers, so don't bother). Yet Apple gets hailed as being innovative and Microsoft as being derivative of Apple. Apple chose to work only with a limited set of hardware, sold by them at extremely high prices, which made their OS job a lot easier than Microsoft's, yet MS gets no cred for making their OS work with a wide enough variety of hardware platforms that it drove the entire growth and usefulness of PCs in home and business environments. And I've never understood why Apple hasn't been hit by more malware. It is now starting to be, but it's always had vulnerabilities, some severe ones, and the new OS is just a pretty wrapper around a Unix kernel. The only reasons I can think of for hackers laying off of Apple are that they like Apple, they are enough hackers that are fanboys, and it's represented a small enough part of the pie you can get more traction if you hack a Windows OS.
What always made me shake my head was the Occupy Wall Street idiots over here shrieking against capitalism and corporations, all while using their iOS devices and worshiping Steve Jobs. Cognitive dissonance at its finest.
And yes, I have iOS devices, they serve my needs adequately, and I have a series of apps that are not translatable to Windows or Android as yet, so inertia keeps me on iOS, but I also don't jump on each new h/w release and only have upgraded my phone once, and my tablet once, when the old ones got unusable. I just don't understand the almost religious fervor associated with Apple.
Andrew: Well, I have never had any problems with Airplay and I have two apple TVs and an Airport Express, I think there are too many variables involved to just say label Airplay as an Unmitigated Disaster - bit of a sweeping statement - it totally depends on your network, the router, the building you live in, whats around you causing intereference. I doubt it would have sold in its numbers if it was really that bad.
It's an unmitigated disaster for a company that otherwise does everything else so well. A sweeping and perfectly acceptable statement when you consider that half the chain was hardwired for much of that time. If it's going to be so affected by everything going on around it, perhaps it should have been engineered to deal with interference better to begin with.
The most annoying is when streaming music or a podcast and for no reason it just up and stops. FULL STOP. The ATV goes back to the menu screen. Does the iPhone or the ATV even try to pick back up, or ASK if I want to resume playback? Nope. It just quits. Occasionally I'll be listing to a 700+ song playlist, and on random play at that, and it will just stop playing after a song is over, and the Airplay connection has been dropped. For what Airplay is capable of, the implementation is kind of an embarrassment.
To add to the above. I just got a phone call while listening to an Airplay stream. Usually the music picks back up after a phone call, especially a 12 second one where I hung right up when I found it was a telemarketer. Did it pick back up this time? NOPE. Airplay icon was black as if I wasn't connected at all. This happens on music or video fairly regularly.
Other times I'll be flipping through tracks or even selecting a SPECIFIC track, and a completely DIFFERENT track plays from the one I've selected. I have to terminate the connection and start over to sync it back up. That has nothing to do with interference or a poor connection. It's just poor implementation and the lack of consistency is extremely annoying.
Paul W:terrible mistakes like the cancer on a wrist smart watch
Playdrv4me:The most annoying is when streaming music or a podcast and for no reason it just up and stops. FULL STOP. The ATV goes back to the menu screen. Does the iPhone or the ATV even try to pick back up, or ASK if I want to resume playback? Nope. It just quits. Occasionally I'll be listing to a 700+ song playlist, and on random play at that, and it will just stop playing after a song is over, and the Airplay connection has been dropped. For what Airplay is capable of, the implementation is kind of an embarrassment.
I have similar problems. We have an ATV, A9, Essence, Beoplay A8, Beolit 12 and 2 x Playmakers in regular use. Yesterday whilst listening to AC/DC, part way through one track on an album, the Essence simply switched itself off. Whenever I try to play music, using the Airplay menu I choose a source to play via and it's clearly ticked, but then nothing comes out of the connected speakers or, it simply reverts back to the iPad I'm using. This can happen for up to 3 times each time I want to play something. Very frustrating. It mainly happens while it's trying to find products on the network but not always.
Even when the Essence is clearly shown on the Airplay menu as being connected - it isn't. To fix it, I either have to 'renew lease' in the Wi-Fi menu, or completely turn off Wi-Fi and turn it on again on my iPad. Sometimes even having to unplug our Wi-Fi sender and plug it in again to get it to work. It's driving me mad and completely spoiling playing music. I just want to forget streaming and go back to CD's, tapes and vinyl. Every day it's an issue. So much for seamless integration!
Dave.
In comparison to a friend trying to stream music from an android to an airstream device it is a dream - ok maybe it has flaws but there are workarounds if you are an Apple user - stream music from ATV using a fixed connection, the remote app on an iPhone or iPad to stream from Apple TV or a Mac/PC running iTunes works really well.
IMHO and not wishing to cause offence, the technology is in its infancy and they are still ironing out problems with it - everyone wants wireless streaming and maybe it's just too early or expecting too much from what is meant to be primarily a phone - perhaps there is too much hype.
If going back to vinyl and tapes then why not an iPhone dock and cut out the streaming?
elephant: Paul W: terrible mistakes like the cancer on a wrist smart watch OMG Looks at his wrist ⌚️
Paul W: terrible mistakes like the cancer on a wrist smart watch
terrible mistakes like the cancer on a wrist smart watch
OMG
Looks at his wrist
⌚️
Not to mention social suicide - the mark of a Pariah!
Ban boring signatures!
Dave Farr:I have similar problems. We have an ATV, A9, Essence, Beoplay A8, Beolit 12 and 2 x Playmakers in regular use. Yesterday whilst listening to AC/DC, part way through one track on an album, the Essence simply switched itself off...... Dave.
Mark:High Voltage ??? we tend to forget there is more to design than designing.
Dave Farr:I only just got that but I am tired! AirPlay has mostly been unusable all day today. Nothing connects, if it does, it drops out all of the time, the Beomusic app can't find any of my products again and says they must be on the same network (which they are) and the AirPlay icon doesn't even appear on the drag up menu! I'm having to use Bluetooth to play anything. Dave
That's interesting. My iPad is on the 5 GHz band and my Playmaker is on the 2.4 GHz band of my dual band router and they see each other.
elephant: Dave Farr: I only just got that but I am tired! AirPlay has mostly been unusable all day today. Nothing connects, if it does, it drops out all of the time, the Beomusic app can't find any of my products again and says they must be on the same network (which they are) and the AirPlay icon doesn't even appear on the drag up menu! I'm having to use Bluetooth to play anything. Dave And I only got it because you got it. I must just be old not tired On the other hand AirPlay is working fine in my new configuration -- however I get that not on network because of my dual bands which is a new frustration. When I come home the iPhone selects the 2.x band and it can't find the Essence which is on the 5GHz band. The bands provide a converged network except for this new use case Once I switch the phone to the 5GHz band it picks up the Essence and we are rockin' 'n rollin'
Dave Farr: I only just got that but I am tired! AirPlay has mostly been unusable all day today. Nothing connects, if it does, it drops out all of the time, the Beomusic app can't find any of my products again and says they must be on the same network (which they are) and the AirPlay icon doesn't even appear on the drag up menu! I'm having to use Bluetooth to play anything. Dave
I only just got that but I am tired!
AirPlay has mostly been unusable all day today. Nothing connects, if it does, it drops out all of the time, the Beomusic app can't find any of my products again and says they must be on the same network (which they are) and the AirPlay icon doesn't even appear on the drag up menu! I'm having to use Bluetooth to play anything.
Dave
And I only got it because you got it. I must just be old not tired
On the other hand AirPlay is working fine in my new configuration -- however I get that not on network because of my dual bands which is a new frustration. When I come home the iPhone selects the 2.x band and it can't find the Essence which is on the 5GHz band. The bands provide a converged network except for this new use case
Once I switch the phone to the 5GHz band it picks up the Essence and we are rockin' 'n rollin'
I would think this is from a programming bug of the essence. If the essence have both 2.4 and 5 then it should have a setting for dual band screening for access. That is how a dual band wireless device works. Now it seems it's set to just 5 and not listening for calls on 2.4. It's a bad setting in set up och a bug for b&o.
Having regular airplay dropouts on A8, I'd like anyone, be it B&O or Apple, to fix the issue.
I agree that AirPlay is buggy and not as mature an application as it should be, it is also important to make sure your problems are with AirPlay and/or the network and not something else. When I first got my PlayMaker, I had dropout issues. I went to a fixed IP address, which is supposed to help, but still had issues. Then I noticed that when streaming Spotify from my iPad or iPhone I didn't have issues, but did when streaming from my PC running iTunes. Some investigation showed that the problem was an application running on my PC that was part of the install of my Netgear dual band router. It had an application that monitored internet connectivity, monitored the network, etc. called Netgear Genie. Useful app when something is wrong, good diagnostic tools, but it would decide it needed highest priority to poll the network periodically, and would just hammer all other network traffic to a standstill. Didn't seem to affect anything not attached to the PC, so it was just seizing control of the PCs network connectivity which messed up streaming from the PC. I removed it from the list of apps that start automatically, it's there if I want/need to start it and then I terminate it when I'm through with it, and it solved 99+% of my dropouts.
I'm fortunate as I'm on a three acre lot so I can only barely see one other network that barely shows one bar at best on signal strength. I know this all is worse if you're in a dense urban or other environment with a lot of other networks crowding things.
I use mine with iPad only so I can only hope that someday some of them fixes it
Apple have in the latest iOS 9 beta rewritten AirPlay for better performance. Hopefully this will result in better real performance and stability.
Martin: Apple have in the latest iOS 9 beta rewritten AirPlay for better performance.
Apple have in the latest iOS 9 beta rewritten AirPlay for better performance.
Interesting - any articles or infos on that, that you could point to?
MM
There is a tv - and there is a BV
Millemissen: Martin: Apple have in the latest iOS 9 beta rewritten AirPlay for better performance. Interesting - any articles or infos on that, that you could point to? MM
http://9to5mac.com/2015/09/11/apple-ios-9-airplay-improvements-screen-mirroring/
Martin: http://9to5mac.com/2015/09/11/apple-ios-9-airplay-improvements-screen-mirroring/
Thanks!
Having defended AirPlay it was Sod's law that I also experienced drop outs the other day in London which has a super fast connection but not in frinton which is much slower. I tried then streaming local files from my iPhone with the same effect. This is the only time it has happened and is ok now, but in my London place there are masses of wifi for networks and loads of apple TVs spread across the other flats. Anyway having experienced it I can now sympathise, could it be interference, updates from Apple or Apple products doing something we don't know. It's fine now so can't investigate further. Yesterday I
got a letter from my ISP saying there was a rouge SMP device (whatever that is) on my network, can only assume it is the CCTV, conclusion is that there are too many devices on my network even though everything is hardwired, something somewhere could have been using up the bandwidth or it could be contention on the line.
with regard to malware on macs, I heard somewhere that the reason traditionally was that the hackers respected Steve jobs for going against Microsoft so left Apple alone, wether or not that's true I don't know.
elephant:This thread was triggered by a pro-B&O guy writing on a Mac forum. Now he has written positively about one of BeoBoy68's favourite topics: http://9to5mac.com/2015/10/12/devialet-phantom-review/
BeoBoy68: elephant: This thread was triggered by a pro-B&O guy writing on a Mac forum. Now he has written positively about one of BeoBoy68's favourite topics: http://9to5mac.com/2015/10/12/devialet-phantom-review/ The Phantom Devialet sounds phenomenal for his size and price.
elephant: This thread was triggered by a pro-B&O guy writing on a Mac forum. Now he has written positively about one of BeoBoy68's favourite topics: http://9to5mac.com/2015/10/12/devialet-phantom-review/
This thread was triggered by a pro-B&O guy writing on a Mac forum.
Now he has written positively about one of BeoBoy68's favourite topics:
http://9to5mac.com/2015/10/12/devialet-phantom-review/
The Phantom Devialet sounds phenomenal for his size and price.
You really ought to change your user name.