To be clear, these zone devices rely solely on the device you’re streaming from via Airplay etc. the Ax-1 is NOT capable of grouping any wired source to another Ax-1 driven zone as can be done on other true streaming zone systems. Example: you’re living room tv is wired to an Ax-1 for living room speakers and is playing a football game and you’re grilling in your backyard and would like the game to also play over your back patio speakers, something other streaming zone systems call “grouping” etc. and are totally capable of. Or say you have a turn table wired to one of the zones and would like for it to play throughout all of your zones. Not going to happen on this system. Actually had to call tech support to have them clearly break the news to me. This is a very stripped down version of brands like Sonos etc. and you figure this out rather quickly upon first sight of the app interface itself. You select your music, app jumps to your real streaming app, you hit the Airplay button, select your zone(s), music starts playing. Whoopty-doo. Most newer equipment can already be streamed to via Airplay etc. so what’s the selling point? Piggy backing off of Airplay2’s ability to Airplay to multiple devices and calling it a multi-zone streaming system. The zone players are clearly not capable of actually communicating with one another. Far overpriced and has no business comparing themselves to any of the top single app streaming zone systems on the market. The technology just isn’t there in this product.
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