Andover AudioSongbird Plug-and-Play Hi-Res Internet Streamer - Effortless Control for Streaming Services, Radio, & Podcasts via Android®/iOS® Smartphone

I am a Sonos since 2007 user but they just dropped support for all the devices I have and so I looked for another source of products. I found this and have used it for over two months, in fact this is the second one I bought. The pro is that it does everything my Sonos does, and better, in terms of sound quality. I use the phono out to my amp so that the amp DAC is used and I stream at 24/192. there is an optical out also. This device is small and connects seamlessly to your wifi system. I can say that I have never had it drop a connection ever. You can have 5 devices running at the same time too.Con: The software is not as slick as Sonos for sure but then Sonos made the connection so bad the unit became inoperable and I now use SonoPad as an application on iTunes. The Andover software is V1.0 and it shows. All the streaming devices are listed with the only exception being Pandora at the time of this review. Spotify works but only when you have the premium service. I use Amazon and that is easy to access as is Tidal. The problem is that making playlists is not easy, switching between tracks and services is not easy and creating a set of tunes to play is almost impossible. These things are minor to me but a more disappointing feature is that there is no gapless function. So albums that run from one to track to another have a gap between them.All this said, at $149 for this device compared to Sonos at $495 (Port), it is an amazing value.

I was about to pull the trigger on a Bluesound Node device. I have been researching streamers for a while and right as I was getting ready to buy the Bluesound, I happened to read about the recent entry of Andover Songbird. It was almost too good to be true as it had all the specs I wanted/needed. I AM EXTREMELY SATISFIED and bought a second one for another room in the house. I am using the optical output using Z625 Logitech amplified THX speakers and I have been running the other one using a Sony V21 using RCA to 1/8" plug. I have been running a bunch of music for about 2 weeks: MP3, FLAC and lossless WAV files from several of my best CD's - Telarc and other high quality recordings. I also used Amazon and Spotify music services (it supports so many options) and it was easy and sounded great. I can finally convert my last CD's so I can retire them and stream on the Songbird from my NAS shares and music services. Since I got these, my main stereo (Yamaha amp with Klipsch speakers) has been relegated to Home Theater/TV use. The flexibility, ease of use, features and sound is now great where I can move to home streamer without breaking the bank and sound quality is not sacrificed.The company appears to provide updates regularly. I have installed update on one of the units that I got. Simple process. Also, my network is a bit complex with wired networks, network extenders and 3 wifi networks. I have had many devices I purchased that presented issues to work with things on different networks - such as DNLA. I can quickly connect using my phones/tablets to control the streamers and they both work great accessing the NAS shares where I store music files on wired network.. I have not experienced any issue on streaming music services compared to using my PC/phone.With what I have saved by purchasing the Andover Songbird units, I have now equipped my 2 locations in the house where I normally hear music - bedroom and office, Now I have enough funds for speaker upgrade in bedroom. I still have not tested sound comparisons running my Schiit Modi 3+/IEMagni stack and headphones from my new Audio PC. What I can say is that I am very happy with what I have now after adding the Songbird streamers. I have saved money by adding them to allow for future speaker upgrades and possibly one more Songbird. The rest of the work is converting my remaining CD collection to digital format for streaming using quality tools.

The product setup is very tedious. I think I spent an hour trying to configure the device using an Android phone. Maybe the iphone version of the app works better? Getting it to show up in my phones wifi list takes some doing. Then you get to switch back to the apps setup only to have it still want you to go to your phone settings and connect to its wifi. Do this enough times and you'll finally get it connected but it gets annoying very quickly. I got it configured and figured that even as much trouble as it was at least I'd not have to set it up again. The user interface is klunky and not very polished but it does work. The audio output connected via RCA cables was reasonable. I had not used it after it's initial setup and test. When I went to use it today the app was back on it's setup screen wanting me to repeat the connection process again. If I was within the 30 day window for return I would return this in a heartbeat. I would not recommend this product to anyone under any circumstances.