Audio Pro Addon C10

[What Hi-Fi?]

What Hi-Fi? Awards 2019 winner. Another class-leader from one of the most consistent companies out there.

Audio Pro Addon C10 : Read more

 

[dlwoodstock]

Just bought a C10 and so far so good. I would agree with everything in the review. It sounds great, looks good, is well built and is simple to use.

It really seems to be a great speaker for the money... but there is one (fairly niche) thing that I didn't think of before buying. I thought I'd post here as it might be of some use to some people out there

In the UK, the BBC opted to remove all of their radio stations from Tune In. If like me, you generally listen to the BBC suite of stations, the preset buttons on the top of the unit aren't going to work for saving your favourite station. You can only save stations from the supported online services. BBC Sounds and Radio Player aren't supported (at the time of writing at least).

A shame as I think those buttons are a great idea. I was planning to save my most listened to BBC stations to them, then envisaged simply powering the unit on, hitting my preset and off I go. No need to get a device and app out, or to pair etc etc.

I thought I might be able to get around it using the AudioPro apps Alexa integration (there isn't Alexa in the C10 itself, but the app can use Alexa to make requests and the results play back from the speaker). I can use this to get the BBC stations to play, but they don't save to a preset.

If you have Alexa devices in your house you can probably link them to the C10. You may then be able to save the whole device>app>connect inconvenience... I'm a Google house, but I may well be able to do something similar with my nearest Google device over Bluetooth. However many speakers have auto power off, and so the smart device/speaker pairing is lost once you stop playing music.

Not had the C10 long enough to find out if that will be the case here...

Anyhow! A minor issue for me, but overall a great buy. Just thought it might be handy for some of you out there.

 

[ccristal]

[...]
It really seems to be a great speaker for the money... but there is one (fairly niche) thing that I didn't think of before buying. I thought I'd post here as it might be of some use to some people out there

In the UK, the BBC opted to remove all of their radio stations from Tune In. If like me, you generally listen to the BBC suite of stations, the preset buttons on the top of the unit aren't going to work for saving your favourite station. You can only save stations from the supported online services. BBC Sounds and Radio Player aren't supported (at the time of writing at least).

There's a Facebook group called "Audio Pro users". In there, you can find APControl, a small utility for Windows that lets you save and playback any web radio stream, not just TuneIn's. This is most useful for people who have a Windows box on at all times, especially now that TuneIn has restricted the number of available streams in the UK to UK-based radio stations only.

 

[justdanyul]

I'm sorry, but it's mindboggling to me how this speaker could receive such a good review from WHAT HIFI. Did you actually review it as a wifi speaker? or just as a speaker?

The software is soo poor, it's literally broken. My unit loses the connection to the wifi after being idle for a while, ("a while" ranging from a few hours to a day or so).

Then, I need to go through the full manual pairing process again. which is painful. I have to change wifi network on my phone (as the app doesn't support 5ghz), go to the speaker, press a button, and pair it in the app. Support from the audio pro team is non-existing, just different permutations of "try turning it off and back on again", with a "try and uninstall the app and install it again" sprinkled in there for effect. The store I bought it from, are happy to "replace the unit", but this is quite obviously a software problem, not a hardware problem. I requested a refund, but they insist on just replacing it.

Long story short, buyer beware, as a speaker its great. As a wifi speaker, it's completely unfit for purpose, and basically, its just collecting dust in my office and I'll have to pop a Sonos in there (which "just works" in my living room and bedroom) to actually get a wifi speaker in the office.

 

[dlwoodstock]

A quick update on BBC stations and the C10 preset buttons.

AudioPro added vTuner to the app (here in the UK at least) some time ago. I finally got around to trying it out and it seems that has access to all of the BBC stations as 128k MP3 streams.

You can search for the station you want to listen to using the vTuner section of the AudioPro app and start listening on the C10. If you then hold down one of the preset buttons it will save the station currently playing to that button.

No more pairing required! Just hit the preset button on the unit and it starts playing.

 

[EricB]

I'm sorry, but it's mindboggling to me how this speaker could receive such a good review from WHAT HIFI. Did you actually review it as a wifi speaker? or just as a speaker?

The software is soo poor, it's literally broken. My unit loses the connection to the wifi after being idle for a while, ("a while" ranging from a few hours to a day or so).

Then, I need to go through the full manual pairing process again. which is painful. I have to change wifi network on my phone (as the app doesn't support 5ghz), go to the speaker, press a button, and pair it in the app. Support from the audio pro team is non-existing, just different permutations of "try turning it off and back on again", with a "try and uninstall the app and install it again" sprinkled in there for effect. The store I bought it from, are happy to "replace the unit", but this is quite obviously a software problem, not a hardware problem. I requested a refund, but they insist on just replacing it.

Long story short, buyer beware, as a speaker its great. As a wifi speaker, it's completely unfit for purpose, and basically, its just collecting dust in my office and I'll have to pop a Sonos in there (which "just works" in my living room and bedroom) to actually get a wifi speaker in the office.

I'm finding the same. Every Few days I have to set it up again from scratch. Also you can't assign a Spotify playlist to the preset buttons.